Dinner & A Dead Gal, Session 269
July 19, 2008, 4:38 PM.
Participants: Joanne, Paul, Ursula, Caryn, Tom, Mike, Cat, George, Bob, Joyce, Frieda (Pennsylvania), Eric (Pennsylvania), and Will (California).
Newsflash: We officially changed the name of our Rose Potluck Dinners! Now that we have a better sense of Rose’s direction and style, it seemed appropriate to resurrect the name that expressed our irreverent and fun approach to exploring the unknown reality. Since our raison d’etre is to share food, drink, and conversation, we also expanded the tagline to include the “you” who never dies, yet creates 100% of its reality....
People arrived with their usual assortment of food and beverage for the potluck. But Tom, a new comer, appeared with a dozen long stem lavender roses that complemented the event They were absolutely gorgeous! We also continued to prototype our conference phone capabilities, and three folks called in to help out on that front. Our new phone system, which looks like a Klingon shuttle craft, passed with flying colors. It works great with cell phones and land lines. The experiment worked so well that we are going to offer a free call on August 2nd for anyone interested in joining us! Just send us an email to register for the 4:30 PM Pacific Time teleconference, and we will send you info the Friday before the session (an access code and phone number. The session is free, but you will incur the cost of a long distance phone call).
Rose spoke for just over 2.5 hours, so it was another marathon that covered a lot of ground and developed many of her new ideas. Joanne had a little tummy ache before the session, so Rose opened with riff on physical communications via body symptoms as an expression of the contrary self. In other words, shit happens for our best intentions! This led into a question about the nature of the contrary self and ego, and Rose delivered a lot of material on the ego and essence in relation to the contrary self. I compared ego to what Elias calls objective awareness and essence to what he calls subjective awareness to help connect the dots, and Rose said that I was in the ballpark.
[The contrary self is a new concept that Rose continues to develop, and the simplest way I conceptualize it is as my “common sense self.” That is, there are times when common sense dictates breaking the rules and being contrary, for example, not coming to a complete stop at a stop sign or screaming out your window that you’ve had enough and you’re not going to take it anymore! The bottom line is that the contrary self’s function is to help us realize our way of spirit, which always leads to our greatest fulfillment and that of others.
Also, Rose has been hammering away at the fact that outer ego (objective awareness) doesn’t call all the shots, doesn’t create 100% of our reality, because essence (subjective) is very involved, as are other Aspects of All-That-Is. This is contrary the popular New Age belief that thoughts create reality, they don’t. Thoughts are a translation mechanism meant to properly access over all life conditions and communicate them to essence, which in turn, instantly provides us with what we’re concentrating on (misery or bliss). So when we don’t accurately assess or translate what’s going on around and inside us, we run into problems.
The issue of free will came up and George wondered just how did essence intent color each focus? Rose said it colors a lot, but ego doesn’t call all the shots. It works in concert with essence intent. So when ego understands its essence intent, it will find its way of spirit, which will lead to its greatest fulfillment.
[This is also where the “veto power of essence” factors in. This is my own term based on the second Oversoul Seven book when one of the main characters, Joseph the painter in 17th century Netherlands, runs away in a drunken stupor due to a panic attack at the birth of his first child. He passes out on a mountain side and is about to freeze to death because his in-laws, who are searching for him, can’t find him. Oversoul Seven comes to the rescue and levitates Joseph’s body down the hill a mile or two to a place where he will be saved.
[This is a fictional example, but if explored in Framework 1 terms, would a bystander observe Joseph’s body floating down the hill, or would it instantly disappear and reappear in the new place? Just speculating, but my point is that Joseph, his outer ego, sure didn’t have ANY say in that creation of his reality, but his inner ego, Seven sure did. This “veto power of essence” shows that there is much more than outer ego at work in reality creation.
[Put another way, how many people, as outer egos, actively, consciously participate fully in their deaths? How many people know that they are about to die and willfully engage the actions necessary to create that? Not many in this period of history! Essence, more often than not, is directly involved in the time and place of each focus’s physical death.
[Another way to conceptualize this “veto power of essence” is the Christian parable of “Footsteps in the Sand.” A person who is looking back over their life asks God why he abandoned them during the worst moments of their life, the moments when there appeared to be only one set of footprints in the sand? God (guardian angel, essence, etc.) responds, “Those were the times that I carried you, so you were NEVER alone.”
This is similar to what Rose has been trying to point out recently, that there is much more than outer ego involved in reality creation. The down side is that poor old outer ego begins to deflate, after all, didn’t Seth, Elias, Kris, etc. all tell us that we are gods-in-training, learning to co-create within All-That-Is? Well of course, but it’s not the outer ego that is in 100% control, and that’s a tough pill to swallow if you’ve used the material to create beliefs in the permanence and god-like powers of the outer ego. This is not the case; that is an egocentric perspective at best and narcissism at worst.
The good news, however, is that outer ego is of critical importance in the overall structure of All-That-Is. I used the example of Elias’ primary and observing essences. The former is the directing essence of every focus, the later simply merges and witnesses, sharing experiences. In other words, essence is so desirous of physical experience it will merge, observe, and hitch a ride with an outer ego. So both structures are highly desirable!
Rose agreed with this and mentioned that we should hold a deep appreciation for ourselves as physical and spiritual beings. All these structures work together to create 100% of our reality, and this is why she’s going in this direction.
Rose also mentioned trans-ascendance and trans-descendance – the two main “currents” in reality creation. The former is a more masculine energy (Yang/Eros) that attempts to transcend the physical (this is where various anti-ego stances come from, the attempt to make all movement towards The One primary). The latter is a more feminine energy (Yin/Agape) that attempts to descend or birth as much of inner ego as possible into physical constructions (this is where various “pagan immersion” stances come from, the attempt to make movement to The Many primary). Rose said they work in harmony, but can be out of balance when one is emphasized over the other.
This led me to bring up Eckhart Tolle’s work (Power of the Now, and A New Earth) and his virulent, anti-outer ego stance. For instance, he equates ALL outer ego with pathology, and in my view that’s an extreme produced by “sinful self” beliefs found in traditional religious teachings that have influenced the interpretations of his powerful altered states of Oneness. As such, the outer ego is considered inferior and something to annihilate, destroy, and get away from as soon as possible. But the confusion lies in misunderstanding how stages of development work in terms of outer ego’s widening. There will always be some kind of egoic structure present, it’s more a question of how wide it becomes, how many perspectives it can hold, and how it can learn to work to the benefit of all others.
Therefore, outer ego is really, really important and will never go away. Still, to Eckhart’s credit, he’s pointing toward an outer egoic structure that is more aware, more alive, more present, more understanding of its relationship to others and The One. So there are some very beautiful and useful parts of his teachings.
We broke at 5:35 PM. and said goodbye to Eric and Frieda in Pennsylvania who were helping us test the new conference phone. We then had a dinner of stuffed grape leaves, couscous salad, nachos and red/green salsa, shrimp with pineapple and cocktails sauces, and cashew cookies, cherry coffee cake for dessert. All were washed down with the usual assortment of wines, beers, and iced-tea!
We reconvened at 6:04 PM. and Rose queried the group, “As ego selves what is your view of essence?” Mike mentioned that he wanted to trans-descend as much as possible in this lifetime. Rose went into a riff on the concept of wrath that I didn’t totally understand, but it had to do with understanding the outer ego’s role within the larger structure of All-That-Is in a bountiful, plentiful way. Rose told us to “imagine your ego in wrathful bliss with essence.” Rose then reinforced once again the importance of balancing both energetic currents.
I brought up the notion of surrendering, as outer ego, to that which is greater than my ego. Rose mentioned that this action emphasizes our feminine aspects, which I had never realized before but was obvious once she pointed it out! On the other hand, the act of surrender is something men in our culture are taught to do only as a last resort. I jokingly thought of the movie “Galaxy Quest,” where their motto was “Never Give Up, Never Surrender!”
Bob mentioned that doing the opposite of where our ego is headed can result in solving problems, to which Rose agreed and replied, “Get the hell out of your own way and allow great things to happen!”
[In all cases, it’s really a balancing act between these ascending (masculine) and descending (feminine) energies, and the ego (objective) and essence (subjective) aspects of our being.]
Tom asked a question about ego in relation to all our focuses from the essence perspective and Rose introduced the concept of superego (which is different from Freud’s id, ego, superego) to attempt to connect the dots.
I asked a question about the four basic structures that Rose discussed in this session – outer ego, inner ego, superego, and the contrary self – and attempted to get some clarity on how they all function. I’ll have to wait for the transcript to get a better sense since so much of this is new material.
We ended at 7:39 PM. and said goodbye to Will who made it through the whole three hours on the phone from San Jose (thanks Will!). George presented Joanne with a lovely Thank-you drawing his daughter Sarah made for the surprise strawberry chocolate pie Joanne made for her 12th birthday the previous session. We broke off into groups and chatted away until 10 PM. when Jo and I turned into pumpkins.
Also, we would like to remind everyone that there is a free MP3 Podcast of an excerpt from every group session that is published every Monday (or thereabouts). Here's a link to this week's Podcast: On the Nature of Rose.
Finally, we are in the midst of transcribing and publishing all the group sessions, so be sure to check the essence-of-rose.com website for all those goodies. We welcome your feedback if you find any mistakes in the transcripts or if you participated and wish to include an endnote to clarify something you said, etc. Thanks!