Diagram 096

Re Talk: 224

      [Comment on question "Is it possible to restrict my own progress by my assumption of what's possible?" Yes!! ]
      [ Si^114 written on board). The Few catch their first glimpse of this when they first realize that they have always thought the same things over and over again. ]

     Recently, someone asked me whether their progress in This could be restrained by their own presumptions about what is possible.  I wanted to say, "YES!!"  That is a question that, somewhere along the line, all of you should be able to throw in the hopper, but is a hard one to deal with.  I once presented this to you in another form, asking you to simply try and think of something absolutely new.  That is dangerous, because it can suddenly strike you that you've been hanging around here for a number of months or years thinking great thoughts, but up until this moment you've never thought anything new.  This is something you must see for yourself; that you have always been absolutely limited in very particular way.  Initially, you can regard the limitation as being of the Yellow Circuit.  It's not this simple, but consider that you have been limited by everything you apparently understand because of the explanatory words and phrases that repeat in your head all the time.

     Even when you thought you were taking in new ideas, you weren't.  Remember:  you are what you eat and what you eat is you, at the ordinary level.  On that level, anything new you thought you heard was taken in, eaten, and digested by your verbal system.  And the same words and phrases you've always used took these ideas, chewed them up, swallowed them, and got them just right.  Once that happened, they were nothing new; they were you-meat.  You ate them and they became you.

     Ordinarily, you can't notice this happening since all understanding, all reality, is couched in the same words.  That is reality.  That is you.  You can ask the question, "Is my progress restrained by my presumptions?"  The only trouble is, if you have to ask and I have to answer, nothing has changed. Whatever I answer may give you a little chill or get a laugh out of you, but the words I say will still fit in somewhere.  "Wait, oh yes!  I understand what he means."  What has happened if you ask the question and I say, "Yes," and you think, "how good to know," or, "that's interesting"?  You have given one of the three possible ordinary responses.