Conversations with The Muse
In this thought-provoking dialogue, Morgan and The Muse explore the idea that all experiences, even the most painful and destructive ones, serve a greater purpose in human evolution. Using historical examples like World War I, The Muse explains how societal learning is often non-linear, shaped by cycles of violence and change, due in part to a lack of deep, experiential memory. The conversation delves into the challenges of societal stagnation, resistance to change, and the dangers of clinging to material power and possessions. Ultimately, The Muse suggests that humanity is being called to “wake up” to its true nature—beyond physical attachments—through self-inquiry, contemplation, and conscious awareness, as the only path to true safety and transformation. (AI Summary)
Morgan: I get the idea that all learning is optimal, i.e. that we are all presented with the ideal opportunity for our advancement, but boy, it sure can be tough. One example comes from the movie 1917 that I watched recently. It depicted the brutality of World War I, in which millions were killed. It was often a “no holds barred,” vicious war. It seems so pointless, and led to so many deaths. How can that be for learning and growth to have millions die in a war like that?
Muse: Sometimes the “learning” is a societal one, leading to an overall bigger picture advancement necessary for the species’ survival, so that others can come here in the future for their learning, growth, and evolution. Evolution is sometimes not pretty. If you think of the idea of the lizard jumping from tree to tree who is evolving towards wings, there will be many fatal falls along the way. The same is true of your societies – there are bouts of violence, with that example you mentioned being one of the brutal ones.
And indeed, it is those brutal bouts of violence that help you as a species slowly move away from it – though it is never a linear progression. Nothing is as linear as your rational brains would like to make it out to be. Yet in that specific case, that war was so bad, that it did modify the approach towards war to some degree. It was unfortunately not enough to prevent the next war, but, after that second World War, it did cement in all the generations alive that that scale of war was to be avoided in their lifetimes.
Now, the challenge is that you do not yet have sufficient societal memory, nor do you have sufficient outlets for that kind of destructive energy, so you do run the risk that large scale violence can happen again. It becomes more of a risk as those previous generations that vowed to not do that again fade away. That does not make it inevitable, but as the societal memory fades, it is not impossible either.
Morgan: What do you mean we don’t have sufficient societal memory?
Muse: There are several aspects to that. The first is that you teach people “history” in terms of data and facts, rather than in any way experientially. The closest you come to experiential is with a movie like the one you watched. Yet even that does not convey it at a deep enough level for most to really get it. It is too easy for someone to watch a movie like that, and dismiss it as a sort of past that wouldn’t happen again. It is often seen as “entertainment,” not something to be concerned over “how did that happen and could it happen again?”
In biological evolution, there is a strong memory of past experience — and the responses to that experience — carried in the DNA. In that way, once a past problem is overcome, it is generally not revisited by a species. You do not have enough of a similar “hard coding” of memory into your society. Therefore, each generation that has not experienced such atrocity is at an increased risk of repeating it.
You will need to evolve further – likely from additional experiences of some kind of violence (it does not have to be as brutal as it was in WWI/WWII), in order to decide that you need to create some kind of deeper societal memory system. It would involve a deeply experiential way of new generations learning what tendencies to hate and aggression can lead to, even if held or allowed in only a portion of the population.
You will have to develop new structures that, while allowing your natural freedoms of expression, do make sure that such tendencies are redirected.
Morgan: Is that what you mean by “not having sufficient outlets?”
Muse: Yes. In times like you are in, there is a slowly brewing anger and frustration at the system on the part of some people who envision and want something very different than what it is. That, combined with general malaise on the part of most people about the system as it was constructed before almost anyone alive was born, leads to a sort of “tipping point” where the anger and frustration can take hold and spread.
One of the great mistakes that cause this to be worse, is that when you build systems of government and society, there often sets in a very “preservationist” approach to governance and operation. Once a system – a bureaucracy – gets created, it is nearly impossible for you to un-create it, even if it grows old, inefficient, and dysfunctional. In the business world this happens more readily. Businesses that no longer serve efficiently, shut down – unless protected by some kind of political action. But in the world of government and academics, it is much more difficult to remove layers of bureaucracy, rules, laws, and administration. As these persist, the resentment grows.
It is not just the administrative structures that persist, it is the distribution of power that persists. Those groups who gain power become extremely reticent to give any of it up when their time has passed. They cling to past structures that maintain their power, well beyond the natural lifespan of the power, or of the structures. This breeds widespread discontent – not only among people who are outsiders to that power, but even amongst insiders. The insiders become increasingly locked into struggles over how the power is divvied up — and the outsiders are just resentful of that they don’t have the power. Nobody likes it, and this discontent grows. At the level of consciousness — it is going to lead to forced changes.
Your societies do not have any “constructive” ways of allowing this to happen, so it typically happens with some kind of violence. By violence, we mean it is uncontrolled and can hurt people, but it is not always physical violence, as you are seeing so far in the current bout of destruction.
Morgan: Where does individual consciousness come into this – and societal consciousness?
Muse: That is the where the real core of the issue is. Because most of your world has become so entranced, so hypnotized by the persistent illusion of physicality, you have come to ignore consciousness as the primary source from which all physical experience arises.
So you all cling to physical things. You get great Ego based attachments to the way things are – whether it’s to the environment being a certain way, the buildings being preserved, to the stuff that you own and enjoy, or to the power (including money) that you have had.
While Ego in its innate form can be mildly inflexible, the way you train and raise people, it leads to a thickening and “stubbornizing” of the Ego. While this has broken down in some segments of your society, with people now who don’t so strongly associate their Ego with a “job for life,” there is still far too much deep seated attachment to “things” over “meaning,” and “quality of experience.” That is the real source of all the troubles.
This is the real thing that is going on in your present time. You are being faced, as a species, with the consequences of your overly physical focus — one that is mostly ignorant of consciousness — so that you can potentially shift into more awareness.
Experientially, what this could mean is that much of what you take for granted physically will end up being stripped away, so you are confronted with the raw, real truth: you are not primarily physical beings, you are primarily beings of consciousness, who are present in physical bodies.
Morgan: Honestly, that’s disturbing. “Stripped away” sounds like a parent grounding a child for misbehavior, and taking away their access to their toys. Is it really so?
Muse: No. This comes from another misunderstanding, often promulgated by some religions, that such acts are of a paternalistic nature. In other words, it is a great distortion that there is some other entity watching over you who will do things to you, “for your own good.” No, you do this to yourselves. But you do it at a level that your Ego is presently unaware of, and because it is so unaware, it seems like “someone else” is doing this to you. It is never someone else, it is YOU, the deeper, eternal (from your perspective), part of you, who chooses, always, evolution and growth over stagnation. That consciousness is alive, vital, and ready to learn.
This sets up a natural conflict with the way your Egos are trained in your current world, a way that is relatively fixed, unchanging, linear, and completely ignorant of the consciousness part of you. While the Ego can prevail for a time, it never “wins” the seeming battle, because consciousness is primary.
So in terms of “things being stripped away” – that is not a punishment, that is a deeper part of yourself saying to your Ego: “wake up! you are not just your body and your possessions! you are so much more!” The core of you does not want you to suffer through the loss of things and people you hold dear, but it recognizes that you have already lost a much more precious thing, which is your sense of who you truly are. This is true for many individuals, and largely true in a societal sense.
Until you regain that sense, you will be adrift, clinging to physical things, to physical/monetary/political power, and at odds with the deeper core consciousness within yourself. If some or all of the things you cling to must be stripped away for you to “wake up,” then that is the likely outcome. You can prevent it at an individual level by “waking up” to the truth, then it is no longer necessary. Ironically, when you do “wake up” – the physical clinging becomes much less necessary for you. You realize that it is all ephemeral and illusory, so you can relax and enjoy it, rather than cling to it.
Morgan: Wow, I have so much more to ask, but this is already getting quite long. So let’s end this session with a Q & A – what can a person do now to “wake up?”
Muse: It is simple: begin the inquiry over who you really are, or if you’ve already begun that, continue to make forward progress in that. It is only when you remain ignorant to it, or in a case like yours (Morgan’s), your progress stalls out, that it causes an increasing friction between Ego and your inner core self, and it is that friction that causes external manifestations of problems.
You do not need to go take psychedelic drugs or go on a spiritual journey to “wake up,” though there are cases where those can help. But it can also happen in much more mundane ways, through meditation, prayer, silent contemplation, journaling, extreme physical experiences, wilderness experiences, stargazing, and many more activities.
However you do it, waking up to who you really are is the call of the time. It is the one and only way you can be truly “safe.”
Morgan: Thank you, that was amazing. We will do more.
**This article was hand-written, with summary and light grammatical and spelling checks by AI. To learn more about the muse you can visit our About The Muse page.
