Hi, everyone. This is Jim McCarty welcoming you to the L/L Research podcast, In the Now, Episode #47. L/L Research is a nonprofit organization dedicated to freely sharing spiritually oriented information and fostering community. Towards this end, we have two websites: the archive website, LLResearch.org and the community website, Bring4th.org.

During each episode those of us at L/L Research form a panel to consider questions from spiritual seekers. Our panel consists of Gary Bean, Director of L/L Research and Austin Bridges, Assistant Director of L/L Research, along with myself, husband of the late Carla L. Rueckert, scribe for the Ra contact, and President of L/L Research. Each of us is a devoted seeker and student of the Law of One. We will be discussing questions that are sent to us from spiritual seekers around the globe. Our replies to these questions are not final or authoritative. Instead they are generally subjective interpretations stemming from our own studies and life experiences.

We intend this podcast to be a platform of discussion as we consider questions that often challenge us to articulate our own perspective. We always ask each who listens to exercise his own discernment and listen for her own resonance in determining what is true.

If you would like to submit a question for the show, please do so. Our humble podcast relies on your questions. You may either send an email to or go to www.LLResearch.org/podcast for further instructions.

Again, I’m Jim McCarty and we’re embarking on a new episode of L/L Research’s weekly podcast, In the Now. Is everybody here and ready to go?

I am here.

I am here as well.

All righty. Our first question today comes from Dalton via email. Dalton asks:

“What are some examples of ways that we can quickly and efficiently polarize positively? Is there any danger in rapid intentional polarization?”

Gary, what say you?

Well, as to the first part of Dalton’s question, service to others, like its opposite polarity, does all of its work in consciousness on a backbone of will and faith. There is no polarization without will and faith. It’s important to have the will to focus your attention, to consciously and intentionally make use of catalyst, and to aim the self upon your chosen objective. I mean, think of all the intentionality behind all of that. You’re not unconsciously just being pulled this way and that by life by blindly reacting to it. You’re choosing. You’re saying, “This is what I want. This is where I intend to go” and so forth. It’s also important to have the faith that the exercise of will—even though outcomes cannot be seen or known in advance—will yield results or fruit. It’s key to have faith that the work you do transpires in a context of support where, no matter the surface appearances, all is well, all is working for you and with you, even in adversity.

So how to polarize more rapidly? I would say, although I don’t have the final answer, to examine and contemplate what it means to be of service to others. Aim yourself upon that understanding, and refine that understanding as you go, discarding your outdated concepts. It is a process we all must go through. And in each and every moment invoke and strengthen the faculties of will and faith.

I would be remiss, of course, not to mention meditation because there is no more powerful a tool in your own hands than meditation for effectuating your own transformation, for knowing yourself, for accepting yourself and so forth.

As to the dangers of rapid polarization I think that as one opens and accesses the higher energy centers, one needs to have their lower house in some minimum working order. One needs to have an inner discipline that goes about life mindfully, we might say. It’s good to have a discipline of attention and focus that is really able to look at what is happening in your life and what you’re experiencing and consciously analyze and accept and integrate that catalyst and discipline that is sufficiently consistent such that you don’t become massively imbalanced or led astray by strong catalyst. In other words, you have a backbone—to bring that word back—that is able to face what’s happening. Even if you get thrown by a tornado that came out of nowhere, you know to engage the gears of your discipline and process it.

As you really get up there in the higher chakras, then humility and a quietude are needed, as well as a surrender of the personal will, a fine-tuned receptivity, less and less pretense of the personality self, trust, acceptance, faith, desire to serve, and a clean heart. All these are associated qualities.

If you have unprocessed energies circulating in the lower chakras that are engaging in separation as you get up into the higher chakras as you try to transcend the personality self whereby you might contact Intelligent Infinity and Intelligent Energy—say you have personal grudges or animosities or desires to harm or desire for egoic enhancement or gratification, or on the flip side, inferiority complexes or issues of self-worth and so forth—then some sort of crisis may be precipitated that shows an inability for your system to sustain that inner conflict where you have a lack of unity of purpose—some parts of you are grabbing that energy to engage in separation and some parts of you are trying to become humble and seek unity.

But it’s not so much about becoming perfect or removing all the shadows from the self or clearing out every chakra completely. It’s about balance of the system. It’s about having a system of loving discipline in place, a structure of seeking, and having a mode of living that is built upon spiritual principles of unity, of love, of light and service to others.

In #35.4 Ra does invoke one example of an entity who did overly hastily open their polarization without due attention to the synthesizing mind/body/spirit complex, which caused that entity to go insane. That entity’s name was Adolf Hitler. That would be an interesting discussion to have some time.

Also in #75.23, Ra describes the adept moving into the higher chakra work. They said that as an adept becomes a more and more consciously crystalized entity, it gradually manifests more and more of that which it always has been since before time—that is the One Infinite Creator. They also say that such an adept lives more and more as it is. So, there’s really a dropping of pretense of personality, attachments, and aversions, as well as a strong ability to be with and not resist the moment, to open the heart to all of life, and so forth.

Insofar as having blockages in the lower chakras of your energy system, yet still attempting to get into those higher chakras without addressing those lower ones and bringing your entire system into balance, then there is potential for danger. Ra indicates that insanity may be one outcome. But who knows whether other self or other destructive behaviors might result, even up to and including disintegration of the personality itself.

But anyways, I’ve yacked for a long time. Back to you, Jim.

Okay, Gary, very good. Austin, how about you? What do you think about this question?

Gary gave a very thorough and great answer. So, my points might be going over what he already went over as we normally do. But hopefully there’s some different perspectives in there.

I would preface my response with the quote that Ra gives from Session #19.13, although it seems unrelated. Here Ra talks about why our physical bodies were weakened in third density as opposed to second density. Here is what they said:

“This catalyst then is shared between peoples as an important part of each self’s development as well as the experiences of the self in solitude and the synthesis of all experience through meditation. The quickest way to learn is to deal with other-selves. This is a much greater catalyst than dealing with the self. Dealing with the self without other-selves is akin to living without what you would call mirrors. Thus, the self cannot see the fruits of its beingness. Thus, each may aid each by reflection.”

There’s a general theme within the Law of One that interaction and service to other selves is our primary method of growth and evolution within this incarnation. I view polarization as being the natural product of growth and evolution. So, based on this idea, my own thoughts would be that the quickest way to polarize would be to ensure that you have basically two things in your life. One would be a great exposure to a wide range of social interaction, and the second would be ample time to meditate and contemplate and reflect and synthesize all these social experiences gained. I think that it would be important for polarization, as Dalton is referring to, to have both of these aspects present. An abundance of social interaction without the necessary time to meditate would not allow for those experiences to be integrated. And an abundance of meditation or alone time with little social interaction would reduce the means of reflection and reduce the catalyst that we have for growth.

Social catalyst seems like it was intended for our means for growth by design. To go even further, perhaps if you want to polarize quickly, social interaction which is far outside of your comfort zone would quicken this process even more. Something makes us uncomfortable because it challenges our biases and our distortions, and essentially gets to the heart of our own imbalances. When we feel emotionally charged by certain situations or people, they’re just offering a type of reflection to us that can allow us to dive deeper within ourselves and discover what is hiding the love from us in that scenario. To balance those emotions so that love becomes more readily available is, I think, a hallmark of positive polarization.

This social interaction doesn’t necessarily have to be face-to-face, I don’t think. I think you can gain this type of catalyst just by exposing yourself to ideas and philosophies that trigger emotional reactions or challenge your own sense of identify such as reading a book by someone that you know you disagree with, or listening to radio shows or podcasts about topics that you have an aversion towards, or entertaining ideas that go against your very nature. I think the emotional charges that these types of activities generate can be utilized as a powerful catalyst, so long as it’s done carefully and you’re not over-stimulating your emotions and just getting angry all the time without processing it.

I think it’s really important to note that none of this is really necessary for polarization. The way that our lives work, I think the way that the whole system is set up is that our lessons are naturally drawn to us. We will naturally—through living our lives socially or alone or however we end up living our lives—be confronted with these things that will offer the opportunity for us to grow. Catalyst will continue to be offered to us until we get a hint and actually process it.

As far as dangers of rapid polarization go, I’d say maybe over-extending yourself beyond what your original plan was and becoming overwhelmed by experience that you are seeking just for the sake of rapid polarization. If it’s a true desire to seek out consciously this catalyst and polarization, then by all means, I’d say give it a go.

But if you’re simply worried about polarizing because of some cut-off date or a minimum requirement for Harvest or something like that—which are big themes in the Law of One that some people gravitate towards—I would say just stop worrying about those things and simply implement a disciplined spiritual practice like Gary was talking about. A practice of reflection and meditation into the life that you’re already living is really all that you’ll need for the polarization that you were meant to achieve.

Gary mentioned the one example that Ra gave of somebody who polarized rapidly. I think they mentioned somebody else that we might be able to extrapolate as being somebody who polarized too rapidly. Ra said that Aleister Crowley become over-stimulated by his attempts at balance with the higher chakras, I think. To me, that’s a sign of rapid polarization, or too rapid a polarization, and he’s having to heal in between his lifetimes from that over-stimulation.

So, just throwing that one out there, too. Throwing it back to Jim. What do you think, Jim?

I think I really liked your answer, Austin. I especially liked the part when you said to just relax into what you’re doing and realize that you’re going to polarize in a way that is appropriate for you. I would like to go maybe a little bit further with that.

When he’s saying ‘rapid polarization’, I’m wondering if he’s wanting to eat up as much catalyst as possible, and as quickly as possible? I think Ra said that the total efficient use of catalyst on the planet here is very rare. We let a lot go. I think that if you really wanted to polarize as efficiently as possible, then rather than thinking of speed, we would think very carefully about the life we live. As Gary was saying, we need to be reflective while in our experiences. We need to develop a way each day to begin to assess what’s going on.

Begin with meditation and throughout the day maybe do it a couple more times. Keep that attitude going and at the end of the day, maybe take a look at everything that’s happened to you. Try to use the balancing exercises that Ra suggested so that you can use what’s come your way as efficiently as possible. Because what has come your way has not done so by accident. Each of us has made pre-incarnative choices that we want to learn certain lessons that will balance us in the overall sense in order to become the Creator again. We have to realize that we are, what Carla used to say, a three-hundred and sixty degree being, which suggests that we are all things.

We are things of which we approve, and we are things which we disapprove. We need to be balancing those so we don’t have to worry about approval or disapproval. We need to try to remain in the center of love and understanding as best we can understand in the third density, and have an open heart for everyone around us.

So, with that said, I’ll go ahead and assume that I should provide a little more information about how some people have done In their progress of polarizing. In #35.1, Don asked about Franklin Roosevelt and what his life pattern was like. Ra said:

“The one known as Franklin developed very quickly up through red, orange, yellow, and green, and began to work in the blue-ray energy center at a tender age, as you would say. This rapid growth was due, firstly, to previous achievements in the activation of these rays…”

That would be in other incarnations . So, you start early in other incarnations, then once you get here…

“…secondly, to the relative comfort and leisure of his early existence; thirdly, due to the strong desire on the part of the entity to progress.”

Now this is again what Gary was saying about faith and will. Those are two real strong allies throughout the entire incarnation for doing whatever it is we want to do, including and most especially polarizing. This is because so much of what we’re trying to do here is that which has to be taken on faith. You can’t prove anything that’s going on here, except maybe to yourself. Maybe after you’ve made a little progress and you see that you are now able to accept things that you weren’t able to accept. Maybe you can see that you are making some progress. But Carla used to say that it’s not a good idea to try to take your spiritual temperature because we don’t really know what kind of progress we’re making. For example, you may think you’ve had a rotten meditation. But you don’t really know what’s been going on completely in your meditative state. Any meditation is better than no meditation. It’s not possible to not progress if you meditate.

So, what is important is the intention that you enter into the meditative state or enter into processing catalyst, enter into interacting with other people with the intention to do it with as much love as you can. If you weren’t able to generate the love you hoped, then in your balancing exercises try to balance where it is you felt you fell short.

In #34.14, Don is asking some questions about polarizing with respect to the self in relation to war and rumors of war. Ra answers in one part by saying:

“One may find oneself in the situation of war and polarize somewhat towards the positive, activating orange, yellow, and then green by heroic, if you may call them this, actions taken to preserve the mind/body/spirit complexes of other-selves.”

You know, falling on a grenade. You die, the other one lives, you go to fourth density. That’s kind of a real quick one, but I don’t think many people are going to sign up for that course.

“Finally, one may polarize very strongly third ray by expressing the principle of universal love at the total expense of any distortion towards involvement in bellicose actions. In this way the entity may become a conscious being in a very brief span of your time/space. This may be seen to be what you would call a traumatic progression. It is to be noted that among your entities a large percentage of all progression has, as catalyst, trauma.”

So, if you really want to progress quick, then get ready to bear the brunt of trauma because we learn best through trauma. The reason I believe this is because trauma takes more effort, more energy, more intention, more focus, more response, more balance, and more everything, more meditation, more friends, more help. When you’re going through a traumatic situation—maybe you’ve lost friends or family or loved ones in a car accident, maybe you’re crashed in a plane and you’re out in the wilderness, you’ve got to be saved—remember that Ra said love is in every moment. All kinds of things that can happen to you that look on the surface to be just drastic and traumatic and terrible are really opportunities to find the love in the moment. There is no situation where there is not love.

So, we need to be looking for that love, even in traumatic situations. If we can’t find it, well, maybe we need to add it ourselves because we have love we can put into any moment.

One last thing I wanted to say is concerning Wanderers. Ra suggested that the positively-oriented Wanderer chooses to hazard the danger of the forgetting in order to be of service to others by radiating love of others. If the forgetting is penetrated, the amount of catalyst in third density will polarize the Wanderer in much greater efficiency than should be expected in the higher, more harmonious densities. So, if you happen to be a Wanderer–and I think there is a really good chance that many folks interested in the Law of One are Wanderers–penetrating the forgetting is a very helpful thing to do. Again, meditation is probably one of the best ways that you can use to penetrate the forgetting and to try to figure out what it is you’ve come here to learn and what your lessons were.

You could also use dream analysis, that’s a great way for getting messages from your subconscious. Your subconscious mind is really where you want to look if you want to try to penetrate the forgetting because the subconscious mind connects you to everything that exists. You would go down through your conscious mind to the subconscious, to the racial mind, to the planetary mind, then to the cosmic mind. You have an access there to the entire creation. In that respect, then, you have access to all the information you’ll ever need to know.

So, again, three suggestions: meditate, meditate—and guess what the third one is—meditate. Okay. Any final comments, guys?

Yeah, I have one, which is that I think you, Jim, brought up a really good point when you looked up the word ‘efficient’. I had kind of been associating that word with speed, which can certainly be an aspect of efficiency, but that’s not all of what efficiency means. I think that if one were completely efficiently using catalyst, then that would mean that catalyst is not being wasted. Catalyst doesn’t have to constantly repeat itself like it does in nearly all of our lives because one is greeting catalyst as it happens and making use of it and processing it and then moving on, allowing the next round of catalyst to come.

One thing I wanted to add to how catalyst is used is that in #93.10 Ra said that all uses of catalyst by the mind are those consciously applied to catalyst. Without conscious intent, the use of catalyst is never processed through, as Jim and Austin were describing, meditation, ideation and imagination. So, I think so much of the work happens as far as just setting the intent and acknowledging the catalyst, looking at it, bringing your attention to it, and so forth.

But then Ra also describes that much work of processing catalyst happens on an unconscious or subconscious level. So, I think the conscious mind greets it and looks at it and analyzes it and ideates and imaginates, and it does what it can, but then takes it into meditation and sits in the silence and then allows that conscious sector of catalyst to sink down in to the roots of mind and allow the deeper work to happen there as it will. But that’s my final thought.

Austin, any final thoughts from you?

I don’t think there are any more thoughts left.

We’ve flung them all out.

Yeah, you guys both gave incredibly thorough, very impressive answers.

Well, I think you were, too, Austin. I think we really got the band together today. We riffed on each other.

Indeed.

Okay, our next question is from Jeremy via Bring4th. He says:

“Incarnation seems to be an experience of trying to learn deeper, more subtle lessons without looking directly at them”

That’s an interesting statement.

“What swamps our minds in waking reality are a never-ending array of details; all manner of discrete concerns about the character involved in the incarnation. Whether it’s work, relationship, diet, whatever it is, we seem wired to assign these concerns priority.

These details distract us, wrap us up in their urgency, and demand our attention on them as first class citizens of our consciousness. Of course, there are details that inspire catalyst. But what amazes me are the details that seem to have no meaning, details that seem to exist as filler to occupy our minds. But are these details important? And if so, in what way? How do we relate to them in a way that balance them with what really matters? What might be the function of these details when there seems to be them simply getting in the way?”

Austin, what do you think about details?

Well, to me, I think the key part of what Jeremy is asking about is that he says these details seem to have no meaning. Information from Ra and the Confederation, and many other spiritual teachings tell us that we live in a world of illusion. I think that it’s sort of an arbitrary statement to say that there’s some parts of the illusion or, as Jeremy says, details that have more meaning than others. This is a really abstract statement, but if everything is an illusion, then surely all parts could be dismissed as an illusion. Not just some of them. That’s an over-simplification—a gross oversimplification—but I think it’s part of the picture that I’m going to try to paint.

So, each detail in our illusion is experienced within a moment and Ra says that the most usable exercise within our density is to see that the moment contains love. The exercise is to consciously seek that love in awareness and understanding. Whether a detail seems like a filler to occupy our mind, as Jeremy says, or whether it seems to have meaning, or whether it seems to be an important source of spiritual catalyst, it all may be perceived in a moment, and that moment contains love.

There’s a quote from a famous Buddhist teacher named Thich Nhat Hanh that I really enjoy. He says:

“The tangerine I am eating is me. The mustard greens I am planting are me. I plant with all my heart and mind. I clean this teapot with the kind of attention I would have were I giving the baby Buddha or Jesus a bath. Nothing should be treated more carefully than anything else. In mindfulness, compassion, irritation, mustard green plant, and teapot are all sacred.”

These types of details, I imagine, are the types of mundane filler details that Jeremy is referring to. He mentioned diet. Simply eating a tangerine or whatever it is that you eat or planting mustard greens can be spiritually significant. I’m not sure how many people plant mustard greens in the modern world, but menial tasks such as that, as well as washing the tea kettle is sort of the crux of his statement. Perhaps the catalysts that these things offer us isn’t obvious or, as Jeremy puts it, they seem to have no meaning, but the meaning they may offer us might be simply a matter of perception and mindfulness.

Maybe when confronted with such details, we shrug and go about tending to such details without thinking much about it. We might think that this is just one of those meaningless details and once I’m done with it, I can get back to what really matters. But each of those moments in tending to these seemingly meaningless details contains love—just as when tending to what we feel really matters contains love. Everything contains love, including those meaningless details.

As Thich Nhat Hanh expressed, there is as much potential and sacred nature in washing a tea kettle as there is in bathing baby Jesus or baby Buddha. And that’s not to say I think there isn’t some wisdom and tact in determining the direction of our attention and emotional energy. We have a finite amount of attention and emotional energy to give within this incarnation. So if we invested 95% of our emotional energy into washing a tea kettle, a lot of that emotional energy might not be being used as effectively as it could if we were serving somebody in with as much emotional energy. Also, in my experience, going through transformation and having stages of spiritual awakenings can cause a lot of these so-called details or our attachment to these details to sort of just fall away and open up new realms of seemingly different types of details. I think that through that process we’ll naturally be drawn to some things rather than others in our seeking of this sort of sacred truth.

But it seems to me like Jeremy is hinting at details that are present in our life no matter what and no matter what stage of spiritual awakening we are at. They’re details that just have to be tended to in our life and seem to be distracting from our path. I’d say that these details are offering catalyst as an opportunity to seek love in those moments and recognize the sort of sacramental nature of all things around us so that they no longer seem meaningless, but instead have a sort of infinite meaningfulness.

Back to you, Jim.

Okay. Really good, Austin. Gary, how about you, what do you have to say about this?

I think Austin really got to the heart of the matter, which is one’s relationship with details and how details can be catalyst for mindfulness, as well as doorways into the infinite, and so forth. And that’s basically where, though not as well articulated, my own reply ends.

The beginning of my reply starts with looking at session #83.7 where Ra seems to indicate that there are things that are more important, and things that are less important. They even use the word ‘detail’. Ra said:

“During the process of study (which you may call the incarnation), regardless of an entity’s awareness of the process taking place, the material is diffused …”

Meaning one’s pre-incarnational lessons…

“…and over-attention is almost inevitably placed upon detail.”

Then they say:

“The testing upon the cessation of the incarnative state is not that testing which involves the correct memorization of many details. This testing is, rather, the observing of self by self, often with aid, as we have said. In this observation one sees the sum of all the detailed study: that being an attitude, or complex of attitudes, which bias the consciousness of the mind/body/spirit.”

So, I read that to mean that there are things on the surface that are not terribly important for one’s growth, learning, or study, and there are things that are deeper. The best, albeit incredibly poor analogy that I can come up with—like Austin was saying of his: a big, gross simplification of the matter—is that it might be akin to floating on the ocean and just being totally consumed by the many varied waves—the tallness of that wave, the color of the other wave, and attachment to those waves over there, and on and on you can go.

Whereas, meanwhile, what you’re really attempting to get into and the work you’re attempting to do is not to have your attention so consumed by what’s happening on the surface because you want to get into the deep undercurrents. In the case of polarization, you want to harness those currents and aim and unify them in one direction so they’re heading in service to others or service to self so that upon the cessation of the incarnation you can say that you have done sufficient work, and that you do have a current. You have biased your consciousness on a fairly deep level and you’ve gotten into your essence somewhat, which means you’re polarizing. You can use that analogy at your own risk.

But are these details important, and, if so, in what way? According to Ra, they’re not important in and of themselves. But I suspect though that they are a part of this system that makes third density so effective a place for spiritual evolution. By consciously choosing not to be overly-consumed with or distracted by details, we are strengthening our will and faith—kind of like lifting weights. We have some resistance. It is so easy to let the attention be pulled or distracted. But in order to not do so, we need to have the intention and will to harness our attention and choose what we would like to place it upon.

How do we relate to them in a way that balances them with what really matters? I think that distraction itself—and this gets into Austin’s answer—is a distraction. I don’t think details of distraction need resisted or fought against, rather I think the attention needs, as I was just saying, harnessed by a conscious entity, conscious of what’s important, conscious of what matters, and then direct it therein. I think that through this process, that that which is unimportant will naturally fall away, either disappearing all together, or simply not gripping the consciousness so tightly or being related to. As Austin described, Thich Nhat Hahn relates to details with mindfulness and a sense of the sacred.

Finally, what might be the function of these details when they seem to simply get in the way? I guess I kind of already spoke to that. But I’ll make a little bit of commentary about our lives now as they’re currently configured. I think to some extent we must grapple with details. Details are woven into the fabric of our modern lives and our societies have made details important if you are to live and survive and participate on any level in the society. I think if one’s goal is to reduce detail or remove it, a life of simplicity is possible. But in this world, that’s exceedingly difficult to do.

Personally, I admire those who are able to strip it down to the essentials and live there. In my own life, I’ve actually attempted to disengage from details and to simplify somewhat. But otherwise, I don’t know how to live in this world and not meet the great variety of demands that the environment places upon me without just having a lot of my day and mind soaked up. I think it is possible with enough discipline and meditation to do what needs done. We can strive to see to the chores, the demands, and the details, as well as have our center of focus or attention residing in the moment without being pulled away from it.

In fact, in reply to the previous question, I was looking for a Ra quote and came across one where they say the adept is doing less and less work on an outer level, and moving on an interior level. While Jim’s replying, I’ll see if I can dig that one up. But that’s my reply.

Okay, very good you guys. I think you pretty much covered the spectrum of details here in great detail.

In #84.7, Don’s asking about his friend, Andrija Puharich. He says:

“Andrija Puharich asks about the coming physical changes, specifically this summer. Is there anything that we can relay to him about that?

Ra responds:

“I am Ra. You may confirm the good intentions of the source of this entity’s puzzles and suggest that it is a grand choice that each may make to, by desire, collect the details of the day, or by desire to seek the keys to knowing.”

Now, Puharich supposedly had contact with an extraterrestrial being that was giving him information about the coming earth changes, and about when things were going to happen. He put a lot of credence into that. He had two watches, one on the bottom of his wrist, the other on the top of his wrist. When they synchronize on the nine, then he was getting a message supposedly from the nine, and his tape recorder would take off and start recording on its own.

So, he had a lot of phenomena happening in his life. He really liked puzzles and riddles, too. He felt that most of the communications that we got that were worthwhile from extraterrestrial sources were in the form of codes and riddles that we had to untangle because he thought that they just didn’t give information straight out. He thought that until the Ra contact happened. Then he wanted to come and talk to Ra.

But what this suggests from Ra is that the details of the day are as important as seeking the keys to unknowing. I think that the keys to unknowing are what we’re all after here because the fact that we can’t understand or really know anything for sure in this density means that we have to again go on our will to seek, as well as our faith that we will find something—that there is something out there to find or in here to find.

The Creator is supposedly everywhere, so we take that on faith and we act as if that is true. To me this means that whatever is happening to you, be it a seemingly large scale event or a small detail of the day, could theoretically be looked on as being part of the Creator. This would give the details of the day as much value as you happen to note in them. If you’re wondering why the leaves are in your yard when they shouldn’t be in your yard, well, then it seems you’re concerned when things aren’t as they should be or in the right place. You want to have things ordered. So perhaps, this may cause you to think about why you need so much order. This is personal, guys. [Laughter]

We know that. [Laughter]

I was wondering who you might be talking about… [Laughter]

Oh well, my own experiences are what I know the best.

So, if you’re looking at a detail that’s happening in your life, there’s probably a reason why they are there. This is especially true if you notice the detail. I mean, if you don’t notice the details, then maybe they’re not important because maybe they’re something you can just sluff off and forget about. But if you’re noticing them on a regular basis, the same sort of detail—for example, you know, the sink isn’t as clean as you want to get the sink, or the cats aren’t doing exactly what you want them to do, not eating the right food, and so forth—then remember that the detail is always a symbol for something else.

Sure, we need to be concerned about our cats, but maybe you have a real concern for creatures that aren’t being sustained as they need to be sustained. Maybe your attention is being pointed towards the people around you whom you need to be giving more help to.

There are all kinds of ways of looking at the details that happen in your day. I would say that it’s a paradox. Carla always said that if we run into paradox in our spiritual journey, that’s just the nature of the spiritual journey. There’s always paradox. So, some details are important and some details aren’t. The way it’s most determined is how you respond to it. I guess this can go back to that first question about how to polarize the most quickly and efficiently. Well, look at everything that’s happening to you and look at it as an opportunity to learn something. Any final thoughts?

Yeah, I’ve got one. I think I may speak for Austin, I’m not sure, but I’m definitely speaking for myself in saying that I went into the question assuming the word ‘detail’ meant necessarily that which was unimportant or of small significance or so forth. But I think it’s a good point that you make, Jim, that what seems unimportant may, in fact, be important. Something may be impinging upon your attention because you need to pay attention to it. It’s not simply a detail that needs brushed aside.

To close, I found the quote that was popping up in my head as I was talking previously. Tt’s #75.23 where and Ra says:

“The adept then begins to do less of the preliminary, or outer, work having to do with function, and begins to effect the inner work which has to do with being. ”

I think the discussion of detail weaves in to that to some extent. I don’t think that the adept—one who progresses into blue and indigo ray, and wherever one progresses—suddenly doesn’t have to pay bills, or doesn’t have to get their car maintained, or tend to their house and other functions of their day. I think they still do that work, but it’s not pulling at them. It might be just something of the business of the day that needs taking care of. Meanwhile as that outer work is happening, what the attention is really focused on is the inner work of opening the heart, of getting into being, and then relating to the outer work from that inner standpoint.

As Austin was describing of Thick Nhat Hanh, and as Jim was saying, it’s helpful to see everything as an opportunity and to treat it with a sense of the sacred, and the mindful. I will close by saying Jeremy replied to a political question via email I sent him a while back and I never thanked him. I never replied to that email, so I’ll use this opportunity. Thank you very much, Jeremy, for that and these questions.

Okay. Austin, any final thoughts?

Yeah, I have something to add to the two aspects that Gary just mentioned and that Jim just brought up about the idea that perceptions are always pointing to something deeper. I think the idea of inner work and outer work is an example of how perceptions paint the way that our inner lives paint our outer perception. That’s not a good way to say it. [Laughs] All right, our inner spiritual lives paint our perceptions.

The difference between outer work and inner work, as Gary was pointing out, is just a matter of perception. It’s not that you force your perception to change, like Jim was pointing out. If there’s a detail that is just constantly being brought up into your mind, it means that there is something that you can look at there and that there is something on the inside that you can process and address and get to. As you do that with the details in your lives, I think that naturally your perception goes from you have to be doing all this outer work, to just a sense of being where the outer work has no pull on you. It’s still getting done, you’re still paying bills, as Gary was saying, and still blowing leaves out of your yard, but the reason and your perception of those tasks changes to something that is more of a natural flowing of being. There is a sacredness of your being and everything is done with love, rather than done out of a need or an attention to detail or obligation. Those are my final thoughts.

Oh, great final thoughts. Okay folks, you have been listening to the L/L Research’s weekly podcast, In the Now. If you’ve enjoyed the show, please visit our websites, L/L Research.org and Bring4th.org. Thanks so much for listening and a special thank you to those who submitted questions.

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