Group Question
团队问题
How does the higher self participate in the positive and negative paths?
高我是如何在正负两种路径上参与的?
Channeled Message
(Steve channeling)
I am Q’uo. We greet you in the love and in the ineffable light of the One Infinite Creator. It is our great privilege to be able to speak through the instruments who have come together in this circle of seeking. We are most happy to share our humble thoughts with you in the hope that you may find in our thoughts such inspiration or consolation as might serve you well from where you now stand. But we do ask that you keep in mind that we are but one voice in a chorus of voices to which you may listen, and we are not to be taken as authoritative voices, and so we do hope that you will exercise your discrimination, and feel no hesitation at all in leaving aside anything we may have to say which does not resonate of truth for you.
我是Q’uo。我们以无可言喻的爱和光明向你问候。能够通过这群寻求者的工具发声,是我们的荣幸。我们希望分享我们的谦卑想法,以便为你带来灵感或安慰。但请记住,我们只是众多声音中的一个,不应被视为权威。希望你能运用你的判断,毫不犹豫地忽视任何与你的真理不共鸣的观点。
Having said that, and being confident that each here is of sufficient spiritual maturity to heed well our words, we may speak openly and honestly to the best of our ability in addressing your concerns.
说完这些,并确信在场的每一位都具备足够的灵性成熟度来认真倾听我们的言辞,我们可以尽力坦诚地讨论你的关切。
The query you have brought to us relates to the concept of what we have called the higher self. And you are more particularly interested in how the higher self serves as a resource for those who attempt to wend their ways through the maze of third density life, attempting to grow spiritually through the process of polarization.
你提出的问题与我们所称的更高自我的概念有关。你特别感兴趣的是,更高自我是如何作为资源,帮助那些在第三密度生活的迷宫中努力成长、通过极化过程追求灵性的人。
Now, as well you know, if there can be one pole, there must also be the opposite pole. And so it happens that there are two paths of polarization within your density: that which we have called the service to self, and that which we have called the service to others. We will begin by confessing to you that what we have to offer to you is biased with regard to this Choice. For we ourselves have tread the pathways long and arduous of service to others. We do have a perspective from which we may share our thoughts concerning the alternative pathway — that being the service to self — but we are not such as could, if we may put it this way, give you “pointers” at how to excel on that path. We feel free to speak with those in this group because we are convinced that your choice of polarity has been strongly made, and that it matches our own commitment to service to others.
现在,正如您所知,如果存在一个极点,那么一定也存在另一个相反的极点。因此,在您的密度中存在着两种极化的路径:我们称之为“服务自我”的路径,以及我们称之为“服务他人”的路径。我们首先要坦白,我们对您的观点在选择方面是有偏见的。因为我们自己也踏上了服务他人的漫长而艰辛的道路。我们确实拥有一个视角可以分享我们对另一种道路的看法——即服务自我——但我们并不适合为您提供“指点”如何在那种道路上精进,如果可以这样说。我们觉得可以自由地与这个群体中的人交谈,因为我们确信您已经坚定地选择了自己的极性,并且它与我们对服务他人的承诺相一致。
Having said that now, we invite you, first of all, to contemplate what it means to be a self in the first place. And we might consider together the process of becoming a self or a functioning self, or one possessed of a sense of self-hood, in the younger years of your incarnation. To begin with, you have a wide variety of sensations, both externally and internally, and the feeling of the need to achieve a stasis of some sort, so as to be able to stabilize your selves in the great confusion of inputs you must process as a very young entity. It takes a good deal of work, we would suggest to you, to reach a point where even a minimal degree of comfort can be achieved within the incarnate being of your infant. It’s not always easy to see that the infant is very, very much involved with this work, but we can assure that, from our point of view, it is quite evident. So, we have said then that the first stage of the development of self-hood involves a minimal ability to maintain the mind/body/spirit complex in such a way that it may function in safety and in such a manner as to minimize the painful effects of harsh and seemingly random catalyst that abounds all around.
说了这么多,我们首先邀请您思考一下,成为一个“自我”本身意味着什么。我们可以一起思考在您化身初期成为一个“自我”或一个“功能性自我”,或者一个拥有“自我意识”的个体的过程。首先,您会体验到各种各样的感觉,包括外部和内部的感觉,以及对某种稳定状态的需求感,以便在您必须处理的大量混乱输入中稳定自己,因为您是一个非常年轻的实体。我们想告诉您,要达到能够在您婴儿般的化身中获得最起码程度的舒适感的程度,需要花费大量的努力。您可能并不总是很容易看到婴儿在进行着如此巨大的努力,但我们想向您保证,从我们的角度来看,这一点是显而易见的。因此,我们已经说过了,自我意识发展的第一个阶段,包括最起码的能力,即以这样一种方式维护身心灵复合体,使其能够安全地运作,并以尽可能减少周围大量残酷和看似随机的催化剂带来的痛苦影响的方式运作。
This need for stability continues, we would suggest, throughout the length of an entire incarnation, and we would say, further, to some extent, runs as a continuing thread through a pattern of incarnations that develop over the course of a series of lifetimes within the density that you now enjoy, which is to say, the third. It is true that the continuity of this thread seems broken from incarnation to incarnation, to the extent that you are under the heavy effects of the veil, whereby you know not who you are, or where you have been. But, in between incarnations, in that realm we have called time/space, there is a greater appreciation of this continuity, and there is the capacity to program, to some extent, a set of inclinations or biases or intimations that, while they do not typically rise to the level of consciousness, nevertheless do orient the young self as it begins to develop a sense of itself while gathering itself within the range of the experiences which it comes to have.
我们想说,这种对稳定的需求会贯穿整个化身过程,并且我们想进一步指出,在某种程度上,它会像一条持续的线索,贯穿一系列化身,这些化身在您现在所处的密度(即第三密度)中,在多个生命周期中发展。诚然,这条线索的连续性在一次化身与另一次化身之间似乎被打破了,因为您受到了面纱的强烈影响,因此您不知道自己是谁,也不知道自己来自哪里。但是,在两次化身之间,在那个我们称之为“时/空”的领域,人们对这种连续性的理解更加深刻,并且在一定程度上拥有对一组倾向、偏见或预示进行编程的能力,尽管这些倾向、偏见或预示通常不会上升到显意识的层面,但它们仍然会在年轻的自我开始发展自我意识并从其所经历的体验中整合自身时,对其进行引导。
And so the self grows apace within the incarnative setting. And as it does so, it takes in a great deal from its environment. It generally has taken in a great deal from its environment far sooner than it can properly assess the nature of what it has taken in. And so by the time the sense of self begins to crystalize in a form which renders the mind/body/spirit complex able to negotiate its world in an intelligent fashion, so that it may pick and choose what it likes and what it dislikes, by the time that has happened, it is generally the case that a great deal of formation has taken place in a manner that you might call “behind its back,” so that every mind/body/spirit complex is a projection of factors it has taken in unwittingly into a realm in which it struggles to sort out — “wittingly” as we might say — what it likes and what it dislikes.
因此,自我随着化身的背景而不断成长。在成长过程中,它会从周围环境中吸取大量的知识。通常,它会在能够正确评估所吸取知识的性质之前,就从周围环境中吸取了大量的知识。因此,当自我意识开始以一种形式结晶,使身心灵复合体能够以一种明智的方式与世界进行交流,从而能够选择自己喜欢什么和不喜欢什么时,通常情况下,大量的形成已经以一种您可以称之为“背地里”的方式发生了,因此每一个身心灵复合体都是它无意中吸取的因素的投射,而这些因素被投射到一个领域,在这个领域里它努力地——正如我们所说“有意地”——区分自己喜欢什么和不喜欢什么。
Eventually the self matures to the point that it has a somewhat complete sense of likes and dislikes, and the self you sometimes call your “ego” is complex interweaving of these likes and dislikes all based or founded on those factors or elements that were taken in before these likes and dislikes could even be registered in an intelligible way. Therefore, the upshot of what we have just described is that that which you call your “selves” when you have reached such maturity as to be able to have a focused sense of what that would mean — what you call yourselves — is already a complex of many, many different factors, not all of which you are in a position to claim complete authorship of.
最终,自我会成熟到拥有某种程度的完整喜好和厌恶感,而您有时称之为“ego”的自我,则是这些喜好和厌恶感的复杂交织,这些喜好和厌恶都是基于或建立在那些因素或元素之上,这些因素或元素在喜好和厌恶能够以可理解的方式被记录之前就已经被吸收。因此,我们刚才描述的结果是,当您达到能够拥有对“自我”意义的集中意识的成熟度时,您所称的“自我”,实际上已经是许多不同因素的复杂组合,而您并非能够对所有这些因素宣称完全的作者身份。
And so it is not uncommon that, at some point in your life, you will undergo what is sometimes called an “identity crisis.” Because it begins to dawn on you that, something within you that calls out for your attention, is not fully the product of these factors that you have managed to assemble in order to have a livable self — that there is a surplus of meaning. But that itself is not quite the way we want to put this, for it is not that you have all of these factors of self-hood, and then a little more besides, it is that that which you really and truly are is actually quite otherwise than these factors, and it is this “otherwiseness” which, if we may so say, is your true self. Although even that is something we might wish to reformulate, because what is true there doesn’t necessarily match up at all to the concept of self-hood in the first place.
因此,在您的人生中的某个时刻,您会经历一种有时被称为“身份危机”的现象,这并不罕见。因为您开始意识到,您内心深处呼唤您注意的东西,并非完全是您为了拥有一个可生存的自我而收集起来的这些因素的产物——那里存在着一种剩余的意义。但那本身并不是我们想表达的,因为这并不是说您拥有所有这些自我因素,然后再加上一些其他的东西,而是说您真正存在的本质实际上与这些因素完全不同,而这种“不同”正是——如果我们敢这么说——您的“真”我。尽管即使是这种说法也可能需要我们重新表述,因为那里所存在的真实情况,可能根本不符合“自我认知”的概念本身。
So we feel that we have reached a point where we may have succeeded more in confusing than in clarifying the situation. But, by calling your attention to this irreducible source of — shall we say: desire ? shall we say: longing? shall we say: need? shall we say: yearning? — this irreducible “something” that has made for itself a sense of itself, that begins to recognize that no sense of itself, that it has ever yet succeeded in making for itself, can be exhaustive in relation to that source of the making that one might want to call the true self.
因此,我们觉得我们已经达到了一个点,我们可能更多地造成了困惑,而不是澄清了情况。但是,通过将您的注意力引向这种不可进一步简化的来源——我们应该说:想要?我们应该说:渴望?我们应该说:需要?我们应该说:向往?—— 这种不可进一步简化的‘某种东西’,为自己形成了一种‘自我感知’,开始认识到,自己所形成的任何‘自我感知’都无法完全涵盖那种可以称之为真实自我的创造源。
So, with these considerations now behind us, we might ask: To what, shall we say, is this yearning directed? To what is this desire directed? What is the directing influence? What is the directing goal of those primordial acts of self-orientation and self-discovery that run the gamut from grasping desire to exalted yearning?
因此,在考虑完这些之后,我们可以问:这种向往指向何处?这种欲望指向何处?是什么引导这种影响?那些从贪婪的欲望到崇高的渴望之间的自我定位和自我发现的原始行为,其引导目标是什么?
Is it, as some have thought, God? Is it, as others have thought, an idealized version of the self, the Uber-Ich, the super-ego? If it is the latter, surely, it is drawn from factors such as cultural influences and cultural ideals, often instilled by parental sources, or those sources that stand in the place of parents, such as your teachers. If it is the former, that is to say, if it is God which is the directing influence, or the goal, how might we understand God? Is God, as a concept, also a cultural accretion, or is God, as a concept and influence which descends from above in such a way that it cannot properly be understood in terms of any cultural influence, but is extraneous to that. But if that is so, what do we even make of the inclination to think of it as a concept? Would we not equally well say I have a yearning, and I discover that this yearning does not rest transparently in any distinguishable goal, and therefore it is infinite in nature, it is an infinite yearning? And so, if I can say that it is yearning for anything, it must be a yearning for the Infinite.
这是否如一些人所认为的那样,是上帝?是否如其他人所认为的那样,是自我的理想化版本,即超我?如果是后者,显然,它来源于文化影响和文化理想等因素,通常是由父母或替代父母的来源,如教师所灌输的。如果是前者,也就是说,如果是上帝作为引导影响或目标,我们如何理解上帝?作为一个概念,上帝是否也是一种文化积累,还是说上帝作为一个概念和影响以某种方式从上方降临,以至于无法用任何文化影响来恰当地理解,而是超越这些。如果真是如此,我们又该如何看待将其视为一个概念的倾向?难道我们不能同样说我有一种渴望,而我发现这种渴望并不透明地落在任何可区分的目标上,因此它的本质是无限的,是一种无限的渴望?所以,如果我可以说它是对任何事物的渴望,那它必定是对无限的渴望。
But now we have got ourselves in quite a pretty tangle, have we not? For if we are saying that the sustaining energy of self-hood that has drawn to itself a host of positive and negative factors (likes and dislikes), and out of that host, woven a protective membrane — if we say that and come to recognize that that which does the weaving cannot be reduced to that which is woven, and that that which has done this weaving, if it can be characterized intrinsically at all, is best thought of as a kind of yearning, a reaching-out, and that the reaching-out never ends, is infinite, and is for the infinite — that means I must conceive the self in the element of the infinite. But will not infinity itself, if drawn inward to this degree, militate against the very concept of a sustainable, woven membrane of self-hood? Yes, my friends, so must it do.
但现在我们似乎陷入了相当复杂的困境,不是吗?因为如果我们说,支撑自我认知的能量吸引了一系列正负因素(喜好和厌恶),并在这些因素外编织出了一层保护膜——如果我们这样说,并意识到“编织保护膜的存在”无法简化为“被编织的东西”,而这个”编织保护膜的存在”,如果可以说是内在特征的话,最好被视为一种渴望,一种伸展,而这种伸展是无止境的,是无限的,并且是指向无限的——那么这意味着我必须在无限的元素中构思自我。但如果无限在这个程度上被内化,难道不会与可持续的、编织的自我膜的概念相悖吗?是的,朋友们,确实如此。
One who has learned to deal with issues of this nature, we would now suggest to you, has broached the problematic of the spirit. One who thinks of the self not as a product of this activity of “I-know-not-what” begins to move into a relationship of responsibility for the infinity it carries within. Such a one — such a one that is a spiritual one — must surely function in relation to a sense of self that is vastly different from anything that can be, shall we way, socially contemplated, materially contemplated, particularly contemplated. So there typically is, for those who come to the point of being able to recognize something of the nature of the configuration we have just laid out, there typically comes a point when that thought itself — this thought of the spiritual nature of the being, the irreducible nature of the true self, if still we may call it a self — will find that this is liberating. One is freed from the constraints and limitations one at some point or another seems now to have voluntarily taken upon oneself. And there can be a sense of exhilaration, initially, in this realization.
我们现在建议,能够处理这种性质问题的人,已经触及了灵性。一个不将自我视为这种“我不知道是什么”的活动产物的人,开始进入对其内在无限性的责任关系。这样的灵性存在——必然有着截然不同的自我感,这种自我感无法被简单地社会化、物质化或具体化。因此,通常,对于那些能够识别我们刚才所描述的配置本质的人,会有一个时刻,这种对存在灵性本质的思考,真实自我的不可简化性质,如果我们仍然可以称其为自我——会发现这是解放的。这人从某种时刻所自愿承担的约束和限制中解放出来。在这个认知的初期,可能会有一种兴奋感。
But then! Comes there not a moment when the difficulties of life, whether these are from without or from within, mount to the point that it seems just too, too much, too, too difficult to gather the energy necessary to maintain an enthusiasm for the unfettered self? And, just as it seems to be the case that the discovery of spirit initially has a liberating effect, so comes it also to be the case that this liberating effect, in the course of time, comes to felt as a burden. For, yeah, the responsibility associated with the maintenance of the self without the supports one, in an earlier age, had learned to rely upon, is a heavy, burdensome responsibility indeed. And now we have, full upon us, the dark night of the soul.
但难道不有那么一刻,生活的困难,无论是外在的还是内在的,积累到似乎无法承受的程度,难以集中精力去维持对自由自我的热情?就像灵性的发现最初带来解放效果一样,这种解放感随着时间推移也会被感知为一种负担。确实,维护自我而没有早期学会的所依赖的支持,这是一种沉重而负担的责任。而现在,我们正面临着灵魂的黑暗之夜。
Where shall I turn for succor? Where shall I turn for support? Where do I turn to sustain hope? How can I conceive the nature of my innermost aspiration, when I can turn to no one or no thing, for guidance as to the question: Who am I, and what do I wish to become?
我该向哪里寻求帮助?我该向哪里寻求支持?我如何才能保持希望?当我无法向任何人或事物寻求指导时,我该如何理解我内心深处的渴望:我是谁,我希望成为什么?
Well, my friends, we would answer you that, in this dark night of the soul, it is the wee, small voice of what we have called the higher self that may break through the clouds and mists of depression. And with that thought, we would transfer the contact to the one known as Jeremy. I am Q’uo.
那么,朋友们,我们想告诉你,在灵魂的黑暗之夜中,正是我们所称的更高自我的微弱声音能够穿透抑郁的乌云和迷雾。带着这个想法,我们将联系转交给被称为Jeremy的那位。我是Q’uo。