Greater clarity on pain and suffering and the need for such catalyst

[rva_jeremy]

Diana, that was a wonderful post. I especially applaud this:

…it is only a working theory that there even is or could be a "One Infinite Creator" as interpreted by us via the channeled material.

I've often thought about asking Q'uo about how close to reality our mental model of Confederation philosophy is, the one that most Law of One students hold in their head about how everything works and fits together… for example I could describe this world to somebody who'd never seen it using all the laws of physics, but that still wouldn't communicate the totality of the experience of being on this planet. I wonder how much more nuanced, inconceivable and magnificent the greater reality actually is, and it's probably pretty different than the working model in my head -- in fact, probably different enough that a lot of the tough questions posed in this thread become moot. 

This leads me to the conclusion that it's just as important to acknowledge our lack of certainty as it is to acknowledge those things we can be certain about. In other words, models are tools, and if you could never ever lay a hammer down, would it really be as useful? We need a certain amount of flexibility that can drift into and benefit from a discrete interpretation of the channeled material but also drift out and return to the inchoate matrix and mystery of it all. We need both, I think.

It's so very important that we remember that these works of wisdom are starting points, not authorities circumscribing the bounds of proper spirituality. One's personal, hyper-subjective seeking is the real "Law of One", not any channeled material, teaching from another person, etc. To the extent channeled material starts us down the path and gives us a structure helpful to orienting ourselves on a day-to-day basis, it is worth paying attention to and drawing from. But anytime we use it to shut down possibilities and wall off areas of inquiry, we are doing ourselves a disservice. I include in this walling off the intellectualization of Confederation philosophy that admires the precision and perfection of Creation from afar, without the emotional investment that certifies to the Creator the total character of our foray into separation and reconnection. 

I also wanted to comment on the uses of the 95.24 quote. It's important to keep in mind that Don and Ra are discussing the archetypes, specifically Experience of Mind:

Questioner: From that statement I interpret the following meaning: That if the Experience of the Mind has sufficiently chosen the right-hand path, as total purity is approached in choosing of the right-hand path, then total imperviousness from the effect of the left-hand catalyst is also approached. Is this correct?
Ra: I am Ra. This is exquisitely perceptive. The seeker which has purely chosen the service-to-others path shall certainly not have a variant apparent incarnational experience. There is no outward shelter in your illusion from the gusts, flurries, and blizzards of quick and cruel catalyst.

However, to the pure, all that is encountered speaks of the love and the light of the One Infinite Creator. The cruelest blow is seen with an ambiance of challenges offered and opportunities to come. Thusly, the great pitch of light is held high above such an one so that all interpretation may be seen to be protected by light.

First, I feel like the "There is no outward shelter in your illusion from the gusts, flurries, and blizzards of quick and cruel catalyst" part is being lost. Those of us who are not yet pure, well, we are in for catalyst. If we were pure, I'm not sure we'd be here at all.

Second, because this is an archetypal discussion, its focus is on the subjective nature of personal experience as constructed by deep mind. It is not a statement that can simply be pasted upon any seemingly fitting situation without losing a huge chunk of meaning; it is very particular to individuality and how we personally relate to matters like this. I feel that the more we try to dislocate the full emotional resonance of archetypes in other people, the more we abstract it and separate ourselves from its truth (which is why I rarely see much usefulness in conversations about archetypes). This, in my opinion, is how we cheat ourselves of the full lesson and gloss over the true depth of emotion that informs so much of the richness of life.

Finally, it's worth noting that Confederation invocations of "love and light" ought to be understood as more nuanced than we often hear. These qualities of love and light seem reflexively positive, but over and over in communications, Confederation sources impress upon us the insight that love is so much more than we recognize. We see warmth and sweetness in there, but is love not also at work in the service-to-self entity's embrace of solipsistic domination? When we see suffering, is the heartache we feel not also a form of love?

Confederation sources continually stress that the word "love" is a wholly inadequate cultural construct filling in for what they are really trying to express; it is simply the closest word they can find. Let us not misinterpret the admonition that "all is well" to mean that all is well in exactly the way that we would have it, that "all is love" means that everything is really just a big valentine's day thought. Love can be harsh, painful, sorrowful, etc. Those of Ra describe themselves as the "brothers and sisters of sorrow" and I believe this empathy and willingness to hurt along with us in third density is wrapped up in the nature of their love, the fullness of the Creator's power in this universe to know itself totally.

As Diana said, we can seek to personally own the 360 degrees of experience. In fact, far from dismissing experience as merely benefiting the Creator in a "passing the buck" way, owning it fully in my opinion is precisely how the Creator is most engaged in experience, since we are the Creator's agents in manifestation, illusion, and separation. There is no way to offer experience to the Creator that does not involve full investment in the experience, and to the extent that our intellectual understanding of this channeled material gets in the way of that direct feeling, we might be advised to release it.