Transformation of the Mind - Lovers

[JustLikeYou]

Conveying necessity gets to the heart of what transformation feels like, that sense of being swept along and trying to figure out what aspects of the experience are yours (sorry, I'm not communicating this very well).

I think I understand what you're saying: no one sets out to get stuck with conflicting desires. But one day you discover that stuck is what you are and you know that you can't move beyond it without letting go of something you're kinda attached to.

So if it is the conscious mind that is privileged to choose, do you see "the big choice" (Archetype 22) as a sort of summing of all these individual choices? In other words, do you not see The Choice as a discrete event? I've always interpreted it as a discrete event, mostly because (A) a choice usually is a discrete event, and (B) Ra describes it as happening far before it's nature is recognized, and it's weird to interpret that in anything but concrete terms. But the idea that The Choice is more the product of a trillion tiny "blind taste tests"--that it's not necessarily a tidy phenomenon but something accruing at a more subtle level--opens me up to some different possibilities for conceptualizing all this.

No, I don't think The Choice is the sum of all the individual transformations of mind that one experiences. Rather, I think the transformation of the mind is more like the slow process of polarizing in one direction or another. I can remember at least one moment in my life when I was faced with the Transformation of Mind and chose the left hand path. This choice had negative effects on my life (and the lives of others) that lasted for at least a decade, and many of these effects were embedded into the newfound attitude I had after having made that choice. It was like stepping up a rung on a ladder. This one act of choosing negatively helped me consciously make a more informed Big Choice, but that Big Choice, as you mention, felt more like a discrete event.

It's also worth pointing out that there is at least one other archetype that is central to the choosing: the Transformation of the Spirit. In this card, the conscious self is much more helpless and the choice is merely whether to accept the path or suffer a living death. Interestingly, there is a right choice and a wrong choice on that card. I take this to suggest that the unconscious mind must also participate in the Big Choice. Even Ra points out that most of us Choose unconsciously before we do so consciously (this rings true for me, anyway). Once the unconscious self has chosen, the conscious self must get aboard the train or else.

Well, I appreciate the pushback, because I should question this assumption. For some reason, I've always thought Ra described the reason we gravitate towards one polarity or another as stemming from bias, a bias that they cannot explain and that is a mystery, one of the central mysteries that evolution explores. This is the relevant passage, but it's definitely not convincing, I acknowledge. I'm starting to think I ought to adjust the rough ontology involved here, something I've crystalized over nearly two decades. Oof.


I'm probably just running into the problems of True Simultaneity, trying to delve too deeply into cause and effect here. Thanks for guiding me through!

I assume you're also referring to this passage: "The seeming contradictions of determinism and free will melt when it is accepted that there is such a thing as true simultaneity" (70.11).

I think I have an operative assumption that it is possible for any entity to have chosen differently than it did. That weird passage from 36.2-36.5 where Ra talks about parallel realities left me with the impression that the path of spiritual evolution that we actually take is not the only path we could have taken. Or, to put it differently, there are more aspects of self available than are explored in our discursive movement through the densities. Presumably, the movement through the densities also happens over and over through parallel trials as the M/B/S totality completes its project of knowing itself fully. This would explain why my Higher Self knows me intimately and yet cannot predict what I will do.

But due to this phenomenon I think it is accurate to say that the M/B/S Totality is what it is and cannot be anything else (determinism), but also that we incarnative choices are free because it is not known what, this time around, we will pluck out of the infinite depth of self and choose to manifest.

It strikes me as entirely possible that there is a parallel reality in which some who here choose positive, there choose negative. Of course, I can't support this claim with quotations from Ra, and your interpretation of 19.17 is reasonable. I still am not certain what Ra has in mind when they say that the contradiction between free will and determinism will melt. So I trust that this is so and continue to attempt a version of compatibilism that doesn't make me queasy.