Imagination and Reality

I was thinking back on my conversation with Nero about exercise.

I was thinking, I don't understand how I'm supposed to tell the difference. When I'm talking to "Guides" or in the middle of an "Archetype Meditation", I mean. It's a subtle experience. I think some things come from "them" and some from "me". In the recent experience, the idea to exercise felt like MY idea. Like I imagined it. Nero suggests otherwise. So how am I supposed to tell when it's me vs. Nero vs. god-only-knows-who some part of my psiche world? I can't tell. Sometimes something just seems like I imagined it.

Nero: Of course you imagined it. We've talked about this before. Imagination is the tool for communication. That doesn't make it the source of the information.

Me: It's braincrunching. I have a hard enough time with archetype meditations. But bringing my ordinary thought process into this "is it live or is it Memorex?" question is really confusing. I don't know how to evaluate what is imagination and what is real.

Nero: I know what you mean, but that's not really the right question.

Me: ?

Nero: Even in your ordinary thinking, what you think is 'your imagination', the actual 'source' of information may come from many aspects within you or around you.

I thought about that for awhile.

Nero: There are entities who perceive everything as imagination. Your solid world, to them, is just as imaginary as a fleeting daydream. They think they create everything. There are entities who perceive nothing as imagination. Your fleeting thoughts, they would attribute to that a reality and source external, just as you do objects. They think they create nothing. Your entities, your world, has a split down the middle. All energy of a certain relationship--a certain range of vibration near your physical body--you consider totally outside you and external, separately-created, and everything else, you consider totally inside you and self-created. Only a few scientists working with gases and molecules (and especially quantum 'particles') cross that center divider line and not by much. The reality is that it is all internally created and yet separately experienced at the same time. It's the wave vs. particle argument: your people don't yet understand that things can be polarities, opposites, and quite literally be the same thing; that reality is about perspective. You know that reality is an illusion of sorts. You've written about how you don't like it when people invalidate it for that reason, that it's a creative art form of the self. Yet you invalidate your inner world for the same reasons that some people invalidate reality.

Me: I see.

I thought about that for awhile.

Me: So what you're saying is, even during normal times, I don't really know where my thoughts are coming from. I just think I do. It all has the "sense of self" when I perceive it, so I assume it all comes from "me", but maybe it doesn't.

Nero: Basically, that's correct.

After another long pause, I said:

Me: But there has to be a sense of division. Otherwise I'd be insane. I wouldn't know what to attribute to myself or anybody else.

Him: Anybody else? You know the difference between you and everybody else.

Me: I mean like guides. Aspects of me. In my head.

I did a double-take. That wasn't Nero who'd just responded. That was Taan!

Me: Wait a minute -- holy shit! Now, I didn't even notice that wasn't you, Nero. Why do you guys feel the same, at least at that moment? How do I know, if I'm not 'looking' so my mind is giving me some visual, which of you is talking to me?

Taan: That's the point. You don't need to know. Your guides CAN be external entities you have conversations with, but they don't need to be. Most people operate with their guides unknown, and a good portion of the thoughts they have are actually sourced, if you want to put it that way, from their guides. This relationship is meant to work seamlessly. And there is not a clear division, anyway. Some amount of my energy is yours, and some of yours is mine.

Me: You kind of sound the same. I mean in... intellectual tone, you might say. Although I do 'feel' a difference between you. It's... hard to put into words. But the way you phrase stuff sounds the same. Maybe that means I'm imagining it all. Or maybe...

Nero: Of course we do. Although our energies have differences, which you'll experience more over time, the primary factor of how communication comes through is you, not us.

Me: What do you mean?

Taan: You were reading something "channeled" yesterday and had a negative opinion about it --

Me: How do you know that? I hadn't met you yesterday.

Taan: I have always been with you. I will always be with you. Our attention might diverge at times but in general, in this life, we are not separate. Your recent "meeting" me is about your conscious awareness expanding to include me. I didn't just spring into being the moment you met me, you know. I wasn't on a distant star.

Me: Now I know that's Taan, because you have that feeling of laughter weaving through the words and humor, and Nero is more serious.

Nero: Don't call me boring (sounding amused).

Me: "Let me choose my own words" (teasing him).

Taan: --and you had a negative opinion about it. You thought it was flowery and gushy and ridiculous. But if her guides talked to her the way we talk to you, she wouldn't even hear them. That is not what she is open to. And if we tried to talk to you the way she perceives them, you wouldn't hear us either. We operate in the framework of your personality. The difference is not the guide, but the person.

Me: So when people into Seth channel and it sounds rather like Seth, it's because their personality was already geared to a comfort with that kind of communication, not to mention their expectations were obviously set, so that's how everything sounds. You're saying whether it's internal conversation with guides or 'channeling' something -- er, someone -- um, else -- that it's always the communicator that frames it, not the source.

Taan: Mostly--but with trance channeling this can vary, in part because to varying degrees the communicator themselves steps out of the way so more of the source is present in those cases. But in the case of 'light' channeling, which is generally guides not deeper elements of self, or conversation with guides, this is correct.

Me: But I want to talk to you. I want to know you. I want to know the differences between you. I like that you have individual personalities. It makes it feel more real to me. Otherwise I feel like I'm making all this shit up in my head and instead of spiritually exploring I'm really just a highly functional schizophrenic. Don't you dare comment on that part. I mean I need to feel a sense of 'other' and surprise and 'difference' between me and you. If I don't feel that, if it all feels like "me", then I feel like it's just imagination.

Nero: Didn't we just have this conversation?

Me: Gaahhhh! But how can I TELL what I'm making up and not, since it sometimes seems like -- with that thought about exercise -- that it's MY invention?

Nero: Sometimes, acting on something as a matter of demonstrating trust and honor, is more important than whether the source of the something was yourself or someone else.

Me: Like doing something you think your prophet recommends. Whether the book is accurate or not, whether what you think is right or wrong is what the book says is right or wrong, is not the point; whether you are honoring your God and prophet by behaving a certain way you think is what they'd want, is more the point.

Nero: Right.

Me: But if I really thought an idea came from a guide instead of me I'd be more inclined to act on it.

Taan: This is the real issue that you are upset about. Not so much that you cannot tell, but that you feel a difference in your sense of obligation and autonomy.

Me: Well but it makes sense! Of course I do.

Nero: But the choice is always yours. It doesn't matter if an idea comes from us or comes from you. It is always your choice about what to act upon. You live according to your own decisions.

Me: But if --

Taan: But you give more credibility and respect to invisible entities you call guides than to your own ideas. You want them to be responsible for your decisions by "giving extra weight" to an idea because it seems to come from a cosmic source.

That shut me up for awhile, thinking.

Me: And if I just invented all this crap?

Nero: We've talked of this before. Information has value to you or doesn't. The source of that information has no bearing on whether it has value to you. This assignment of value and meaning based on the source of your thoughts is really just a filter you're placing on things as part of an avoidance of personal responsibility.

I decided to end the conversation there.

Since it didn't seem like it was going very well for me.

My guides don't seem nearly as "nice" to me as other peoples' are. Maybe that is part of 'what I will accept' too. Maybe it's a good thing.

It's kind of annoying though.

PJ