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Commentary on the Book V material
Jim: We lived in the house on Lake Lanier for five months—from November of 1983 until April of 1984—before deciding that that experiment had been a failure. We were only able to have one session with Ra during that time because Don’s physical condition was worsening, and his worry was increasing his mental distortions as well. Most of the time Carla’s physical condition was also below the level necessary to safely attempt contact with Ra. In January of 1984, Don’s condition became so bad that he was forced to call in sick for the first time in his nineteen years with Eastern Airlines. He would only fly a few more trips before his death that November.
However, as we were about to move back to Louisville, Don was able to gin himself up to be in good enough condition for a Ra session so we could ask about the metaphysical cleansing needs of our new home as well as ask about Don’s and Carla’s difficulties. Ra’s reference to Carla’s “inappropriate use of compassion” concerns her response to Don’s continued worrying about his job, his health, and the continuance of our work. One afternoon while, Don was sharing his worries, Carla simply told him that she would take over those worries for him, and he could do what she usually did: relax, have a good time, and be carefree. Don innocently agreed. The bond of unity between Don and Carla was apparently of such a nature that this simple agreement resulted in a deleterious transfer of energy between them. This occurred at a time when both were apparently undergoing an internal process of transformation that is usually called initiation.
We can assume that our friend of negative fifth density found targets of opportunities within these combined experiences of initiation and the negative energy transfer and was able to increase their intensity. The mystery-filled nature of the cumulative situation becomes more evident here as we do not know why Carla survived and Don didn’t. We can only remind ourselves of Ra’s parting words after this last session when Ra suggested “the nature of all manifestation to be illusory and functional only in so far as the entity turns from shape and shadow to the One.”
Carla: At the time of this session, I had gone through every kind of alarm and concern you could possibly imagine. Don had stopped eating, more or less. He was acting extremely unlike himself, and while I had not yet realized he was psychotic and not entirely in our usual reality, I was disturbed and scared by these changes. Don’s entire pattern of previous behavior with him had trained me to respond to his wishes. Don picked our meal times, our movie dates, he liked and received total control over my life. Call me dependent and you’d be right. However, it was the only way Don could bear the intimacy of a live-in relationship. I could object and be heard; I could suggest and sometimes get lucky, but on the whole, Don was an old-fashioned man who liked me to be at home, period. I awaited his fancy. Meanwhile, I read, or did quiet desk work.
Suddenly, he was always asking me what I had to do next, and then driving me, a chore which hurt his piles and which he usually left to Jim (I was at that point no longer driving, it hurt too much.) He simply sat while I went to church, to exercise class, to the folk song rehearsals. Even though Jim was swamped with things to do for L/L business, for the landlord, who had him dig a root cellar out of red-orange clay, and for the house, Don began to try hard to stay in and eat at home every night, also a radical departure from his usual wont. Jim was off-balance—I think that’s as far as his humor was affected. He was puzzled. But I was in full nervous collapse.
I feel that B.C. and I really did merge into one mind, one person, in that “inappropriate” transfer between us triggered by my suggestion to switch roles, and his agreement. Between us, we had a simple dynamic: he was wise and I was loving. Actually, we shared much ground, but our deeper natures were quite polarized between wisdom and love. In that transfer, Don received the extreme sensitivity with which I receive all sense impression, and the fully expressing and open nature of my heart. And I received in full strength the stark terror that lived behind Don’s calm and oh-so-blue eyes, tempered by his firm and very solid grasp on the big picture.
I have come to feel that in the time from this session, which was done two weeks before we left Atlanta thankfully to return to the blessed hills of Kentucky, until B.C.’s death in November of that year, Don was able to complete an entire incarnational course of how to open his heart. I cannot express how much agony and suffering he sustained in this time. The concrete walls that were so very strong, and had protected him always, fell away as if they were never there, and he felt everything. And how he loved! He could not watch television, even the sitcoms, because there was too much suffering. He, the lifelong observer by actual oath, cried at the Mary Tyler Moore Show. And when he was in the same room with me, he tried, over and over, to explain to me just how bad the situation was. This one thought was uppermost in his mind, always. The sheer horror of what he was feeling wiped him fairly clean of most other emotion, and he was unable to remain collected for long around me.
Meanwhile, I was utterly and damnably unaware of Don’s fears that I preferred Jim. When Don began snatching me to him and kissing me, not knowing his strength, he hurt me, cracked a rib, split the skin of my lips against my teeth, left bruises, even, when he was in hospital in May, put me into the hospital with him, with sciatic nerve pain which I’d gotten having to stay in an uncomfortable chair for several hours. (To Don, this was the only chair that was not bugged.) I became frightened of Don. I began waking up in the morning to find Don sitting beside me, waiting patiently for me to awaken. When he had said “Good morning,” he simply began telling me how bad everything was. No matter how I attempted to get him to relax, take it easy, do what the professionals had said about exercise and medication, and trust in time to heal—all of which I tried to retail to him, with absolutely no success, he was utterly sure nothing could get better, ever. For him, reality really began to slip away, to the point where I was afraid to ride with him. My nerves broke under this most difficult strain. I was completely downcast, for I could not find Don, and all I could think was that I didn’t have him to go to—I had to keep together by myself on behalf of me AND L/L Research, because Don was no longer with us. He seemed a different person altogether. The color of his eyes even changed from deep, brilliant sky-blue to navy. I’d been doing his paperwork for a long time. I knew that Don had slightly more than two years of built-up sick time with the airlines, and had interacted with everyone who had to be notified of his illness. Everyone, to a man, wanted nothing more than that Don take all that time, if that’s what it took, to get it together again. The crises in his head were not real to me, or to Jim. Only he had the awful sense of impending economic doom. Don made a comfortable salary. His expenses for all three of us and the kitties cost him about half his check, usually, each month. But Don lost all hope, and truly that being that he became was living in hell.
And how can I look at that and say that it is all part of a perfect pattern? Only by having been given the grace to see it, finally, after many years of gazing at the riveting scenes in memory, probing them and working with them over the days, months and years since Don died. Fifteen years have passed, and that gives a much clearer perspective. In accepting at last the importance of the open and giving heart to balance wisdom, Don completed the personal lesson he intended to learn. Opening his heart killed his body, but truly he was rejoicing not a day after he was gone from the physical illusion, for he appeared to me several times joyful and laughing and telling me all was well. And I, my nerves permanently less than they were before the Ra contact and Don’s death, have embarked upon that balancing of the compassion I have been given and earned in this next lesson, which began the day Don died.
When I woke the morning after Don’s suicide, I expected my hair to be completely white. There was no outer change. But I began a completely new life at this point. Until November of 1990, I spent my time in self-judgment almost entirely. I had found out about Don’s suspicions of me, and felt that he had enlarged these fears until he’d killed himself over them. It was my fault, not because I was guilty of any sort of infidelity, but because I should have guessed what he was thinking and reassured him. But this never occurred to me, in my foolish pride. I just assumed that he would KNOW that I, that paragon of virtue, would never break an agreement. I really have a continuing problem with pride, because I do try to be exact in my ethics. I got completely blindsided with Don’s illness.
It was further confusing that every doctor, social worker, and friend suggested the same thing—that Jim and I needed to let him alone, not to try to bribe him to do things, because he was going to have to make the decision to get well himself, and we would only lengthen the process if we fussed. Looking back, how I wish I had had the vision to say “NUTS” to that and just stay with him no matter what. And yet, as I tried my best to do just that, vowing to stay if it killed me, my body simply went dumb on me, and I woke up one morning pretty out of touch with reality. From March onward, my beloved Don was in full and fast decline, and I was walking through a complete nervous breakdown.
The allergies which had Don so worried about the [address removed] were on his mind because of the lake house’s unhappy brush with being flooded by burst pipes that frigid Christmas Eve. The damp had penetrated deep into the thick wall-to-wall carpeting in the hallway, and rendered about half the house unlivable for me and Don. When we arrived here, we found a dry basement, or rather a basement with a sump pump and no unusual drainage problems. The humidity was fine, and the place was, indeed, a very angelic-feeling place, one which Jim and I have come to love deeply. It was Don’s last work in the world, to pick out this place. As always, he did a fantastic job. It has been a privilege to be able to abide here, where my Donald was alive, where he suffered and died, and where he loved me so well. Jim and I have turned to this lovely little bungalow and its modest yard, and have made more and more of it into gardens. We are still working for Don! That gives us both great comfort. Whatever we do, it is only the continuation of that which he so wonderfully began with his sharp mind and wide and thoughtful nature.
It has been a dark-hued experience for me, complete with literally years of suicidal feelings and self-condemnation. Yet through this catalyst, I have learned to love myself, really to love and care for my self without trying to justify or defend. And this is not so much an advance in loving as it is an advance in wisdom—for one learns to love the mistakes only through wisdom. While I shall definitely never come vaguely close to being as wise as Don, I can feel the gifts he left with me. My intelligence has a persistence and clarity I feel are his gifts to me. And I see it as my remaining personal lesson to follow the pattern of devotion and love through every day and hour of the rest of this earthly life. I live now for both of us, as he died for both of us. And I feel the peace that comes with cooperation with one’s destiny.
(All questions and answers in this session were first published in Book V.)
106.17 Questioner: Now, summarizing what we can do for the instrument: through praise and thanksgiving and harmony we can… Is that all that we can do other than advising her to drink a considerable amount of liquid and moving her into a better atmosphere. Am I correct on that?
Ra: I am Ra. We examine the statement and find two items missing, one important relative to the other. The chief addition is the grasping of the entity’s nature. The less important is, for little it may seem to be, perhaps helpful; that is, the entity absorbs much medication and finds it useful to feed itself when these substances are ingested. The substitution of substances such as fruit juice for the cookie is recommended, and, further, the ingestion of substances containing sucrose which are not liquid is not recommended within four of your hours before the sleeping period.
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