Greetings. This is Gary Bean welcoming you to the L/L Research Podcast, In the Now, Episode #55 [Gary accidentally said “54” in the recording]. L/L Research is a nonprofit organization dedicated to freely sharing spiritually-oriented information and fostering community. Towards this end, it has two websites: the archive website, LLResearch.org and the community website, Bring4th.org.

During each episode we form a panel to consider questions from spiritual seekers. That panel consists of Jim McCarty, Austin Bridges and myself, each a devoted student of the Law of One. We intend this podcast to be a platform of discussion that allows us to probe a bit below the surface of challenging metaphysical questions. Our replies, while hopefully decent, are not the final word on these subjects.

We always ask each who listens to exercise their own discernment and listen for their resonance in determining what is true for them. If you would like to submit a question for the show, please do so; our humble podcast relies on your questions. You may either send an email to or go to LLResearch.org/podcast for further instructions.

Again, I’m Gary and we are embarking on a new episode of L/L Research’s weekly podcast, In the Now. Jim McCarty and Austin Bridges, are you guys ready to embark?

I believe so.

I think I am.

All right. Well, we’ve got a long form question from Vanessa who’s sent us a couple good questions in the past. Vanessa writes

“The next suggestion I have for a podcast topic requires some preface. Last week a client was bemoaning that I do not advertise and that I could be of more assistance to people if they knew about my specializations. He asked me if I had ever heard the phrase, ‘you can lead a horse to water, but you can’t make him drink’. ‘Of course’, I replied. He then told me it was not my job to make the horse drink; it was my job to make them thirsty.

Well, that pitch landed on me very hard. Not in terms of the small picture, my business, but in terms of the big picture that is life on this planet, here, now.

I started to reflect upon how we as Wanderers can be of service by making people thirsty for love/light and the experience of balanced self-conscious awareness. In the Kriya yoga tradition we lead by example and inspire others by living a peaceful, serene and balanced life. By balancing our own self-awareness and polishing the rough edges off of our own personalities we continually bless the life that surrounds us.

But, this pitch, it got me thinking about how Wanderers can be more active in blessing and inspiring the life that surrounds us. I’d like to hear a discussion about practical ways in which we might do this. For instance, my yoga preceptors suggested that one way that we can inspire others is by not focusing on pithy, unimportant subjects when we are in social situations. We can have casual conversations about topics that are spiritually intriguing. For instance, instead of talking about fashion and football, talk a little bit about astrology, which most people have heard of and are mildly interested in. Of course, always keeping in mind that you want to speak to your audience in terms they can relate to and carefully trying to be mindful not to turn them off or overload them with complicated vocabulary and information they cannot understand.

So, I’m interested in hearing a discussion on the juicy subject of practically and actively ‘making people thirsty’for balanced love and light. Thanks so much.“

So, Jim, you got your work cut out for you. What do you think?

Well, I kind of think that she had it going the way I would choose with the Kriya yoga precepts of teaching by example until you’re asked. I don’t really think it’s our job to make people thirsty. Maybe telling people what they should be thinking about on their spiritual journey might actually be considered as an infringement on a person’s free will.

I think that the role of people who want to be teach/learners and learn/teachers is to help people quench the thirst that they already have. We need to wait until they come to us and ask us about it. Or we could, like she said, maybe drop a hint here and there about something we’re interested in without having a pre-determined idea that we want to preach.

We can also share thoughts and personal experiences to let people know what’s worked for us. I think we can do our best to answer their questions by sharing what’s really in our hearts and minds—kind of like little seeds that are cast upon the ground. If the conditions are right, they’ll grow. In #17.2 Don asks a similar sort of question to Ra:

“Is it possible to help an entity to reach fourth density level in these last days?”

Ra responded:

“I am Ra. It is impossible to help another being directly. It is only possible to make catalyst available in whatever form, the most important being the radiation of realization of oneness with the Creator from the self, less important being information such as we share with you.

We, ourselves, do not feel an urgency for this information to be widely disseminated. It is enough that we have made it available to three, four, or five. This is extremely ample reward, for if one of these obtains fourth-density understanding due to this catalyst then we shall have fulfilled the Law of One in the distortion of service.

We encourage a dispassionate attempt to share information without concern for numbers or quick growth among others. That you attempt to make this information available is, in your term, your service. The attempt, if it reaches one, reaches all.

We cannot offer shortcuts to enlightenment. Enlightenment is of the moment, is an opening to intelligent infinity. It can only be accomplished by the self, for the self. Another self cannot teach/learn enlightenment, but only teach/learn information, inspiration, or a sharing of love, of mystery, of the unknown that makes the other-self reach out and begin the seeking process that ends in a moment. But who can know when an entity will open the gate to the present?“

So, I think as Ra said, we don’t need to be worried about numbers. I think the fellow who was talking to her was obviously impressed with her abilities which is, you know, a good thing. But I don’t think we need to be counting numbers. We’ve gotten that message from Ra before, and we don’t need to be totally dedicated to an outcome for our sharing of information. We don’t have to see results right away. We just take the moment as it comes and when opportunity presents itself, we can offer what we have to offer freely, openly and then go on our way.

Austin, what do you think?

Was that a preview of the recording you’re doing for the Law of One?

You got it.

I was thinking the same thing.

I appreciate Vanessa’s question and the thought put into it. I can tell that she really wants to help awaken people, but not impose her own ideas or her own spirituality on others. However, she still wants to be of service.

I can relate to her question because I have one foot of my life—my non-L/L Research foot—solidly planted in a world of people who don’t really have a concept of spirituality. The general sentiment among them is sort of anti-religious, atheism or agnosticism with heavy value placed on the scientific community. And how to relate to these people on a spiritual level is probably one of the biggest themes of my life lately.

So, the first thing I would say is that I agree with Jim a lot in that living by example is probably more powerful than you think. We obviously are not going to receive feedback on all the ways that we affect people just by living lives of love, balance, and peace while doing our best to be of service. But people will still see that and will be inspired.

I also agree that the notion of making people thirsty could potentially lead to the expectation of results from something you did. Making it your responsibility to make people thirsty can also make you feel that you want to lead somebody somewhere instead of allowing the space for them to find it on their own free will. While I agree with that part, I will say that I do think that there is an attitude that you can take in situations like this. I’ll give examples from my own life, having lived with friends who are very much nonspiritual.

One thing I have done and am doing is sort of re-orienting how I relate to people within this world who have different interests and different values. For instance, Vanessa called subjects like fashion and sports “unimportant.” I would argue with that notion. While I don’t have interest in these topics myself, I think that if somebody else is passionate about fashion or football, then it is innately important. I don’t want to seem like I’m criticizing Vanessa for expressing that football and fashion are unimportant since I’m pretty much on the same page as her on those things. But football and fashion fans are also the Creator and so the things they like are also important to the Creator. I think that by defining those things as unimportant we take ourselves out of an attitude that could connect with people. Sports and fashion are massive hobbies within our society—along with many other things that the New Age spiritual community might consider unimportant—that could provide avenues for connection.

There are lots of things important in many people’s lives that seem transient and aren’t necessarily lasting. But my approach and attitude towards them is not necessarily asking myself how I can get someone to turn away from things that I think are unimportant—sports, fashion, and other such things—so that I can then turn them towards things that I place value on, such as astrology and spirituality. Instead, I try to understand the underlying emotion or the underlying current of that person’s hobby or their topic of interest.

I will use sports as an example because it is prominent in my life right now. My girlfriend is probably the biggest sports fan that I know, at least when it comes to college basketball. Her team just won the national championship last night, so I’ve been on a month-long journey of stress, anxiety, joy and sadness. A primary connection point for her and our friends that we share is sports. By contrast, I’ve always said that I am missing the part of my brain that allows me to enjoy sports. So there is a lot of ground to cover in attempting to understand and connect with these people, especially in this past month of what is known as March madness.

I think the initial stage in this example was to orient myself to empathize with their passion. I may not appreciate sports, but they love it. So, I allow myself to get into the spirit and to feel the passion when they watch and talk about sports. A great way to participate in discussions when you don’t understand the topic is to ask questions about it, which is an opportunity to present some sort of spiritual insight or introspection or self-investigation.

For instance, regarding sports, I could ask how somebody felt when they won a huge game, or how they feel recovering from a big loss, or what it’s like to be in a stadium with thousands of other fans in some unified consciousness, or what their favorite rituals, chants, and superstitions are. I’ve found that a lot of sports fans are very superstitious. I think there’s a spiritual aspect to superstition. I think it’s sort of a magical mentality. I can also ask how sports affects the rest of their lives and how it carries into everything else that they do. People tend to love talking about this stuff, which helps me understand their passion more. The more I understand them, the more I am able to connect with them on a deeper level. This way of connecting with them may get them thinking about it more in a spiritual way—although they themselves might not define it as a spiritual way.

My goal in trying to understand things like this is to find out what role it plays in the human psyche or, in Law of One terms, how it relates to that person’s energy centers. I like to consider the way that people feel about things and their role within this cultural phenomenon. I’ve particularly found it fascinating to grow in understanding of sports and sports fans, as well as the mentality around team favoritism and group mentality. There is something very tribal and primal about how sports fans interact with each other and with the game. There is a lot of chanting, which I think is a very spiritual activity that happens at every sports game. Every tribe has its unique chant that unifies them in some grand purpose. Also, there are dances and ceremonial garb, war paint, and probably most significantly, a shared group mind within all of these tribes. They are all so unified towards a common goal, purpose, and emotion.

I think that this tribal identity—the identifying with something bigger than themselves and releasing their individual identity to this larger identity—is activating and catalyzing the orange and yellow ray centers. With sports fans, it can obviously be expressed and distorted in imbalanced ways, but ultimately, the sports fan phenomenon really seems to me like simply a way to explore a very real and persistent part of our consciousness. For me to come to that understanding, I can share and connect with that in different ways with sports fans instead of trying to turn them on to whatever I’m interested in—whether it’s the Law of One, astrology, or spirituality as I define it.

I can paint my perception of their passion with my spirituality without being direct about it. I can comment on things that seem sacred or significant to them and empathize with the primal emotions of they’re feeling. I can observe the source and comment on it and share my own deeper understanding of their passion that they may find helps them connect to it on a deeper level and think about it more. It might not necessarily be spiritual by the New Age definition, but I do certainly think that it is spiritual in a sense when these seemingly transient things which are so important to people help to get them to think more about themselves.

Sports is just one example of a subject that is ripe for finding these deeper relationships. I think it can be done with basically anything that somebody is passionate about. It seems like a good general rule to me is that if somebody is passionate about something, then there is some sort of a spiritual undercurrent that can be found there somewhere. Whether it’s fashion or sports or politics or anything else that we might tend to feel is unimportant to us, it can still have significance and spiritual value. I think that finding that is really the key to helping people awaken in a certain sense, even if it doesn’t look like the kind of “awakening” as we are used to in the general spiritual community.

So, Gary, what do you think about it?

I thought that was most excellent and I’m glad that I’m not the only one on this team that has long replies. Your reply made me think of Ra talking about their experience on Venus. Don was asking about their group in third density on Venus that was harvestable. The group that was spiritually awake had chosen service to others. They wanted to progress spiritually, which affected how they related to the group that was kind of asleep. Ra basically said, “We could only offer the comforts of sleeping.” I’m doing a lot of paraphrasing here, of course, but Don asked Ra if their thinking be any different now and Ra basically answered, “No, we think that’s kind of all that you can do. That’s the best approach.” That’s the gist of that Q & A. That exchange with Ra got triggered in my mind listening to Austin talk about how he is relating to people at their level.

So, basically Austin is offering the comforts of sleep to the sleepers and hopefully he’s not saying that. But I am actually doing damage to his position by saying that because it wasn’t quite his point.

I was feeling quite enlightened myself.

Whereas his point was more about meeting people where they are. And also in that vein we—Jim, Austin and I—were talking with a friend of L/L’s recently who has a past in dealing drugs for some years. He had a system to it, and I think it was amphetamines that this person was dealing. This drug dealing activity was a long time ago in their past, which they attempted to do within their own integrity by not adopting the practices of that dark underworld too much. Eventually, after about twenty years, our friend had lost touch with everybody from that world. However, recently within the past year he reconnected with some people from the drug-dealing days. It turns out that this friend of ours affected their lives profoundly. Some of them had been seeking this person out for the past twenty years. When they finally reconnected with him, they told him that he was the basis of their spirituality. They said that our friend had helped to awaken them just by sharing their own spirituality in this medium, which had an effect. Point being, love and light goes where it’s needed and it has to meet people at their level. But on that level you can still, like Austin was saying, find ways to slip in love and light.

Alright, so what I had prepared for my reply was to read a few Ra quotes starting with #48.5 where Ra says this:

“The audience brought about by Orion-type publicity is not seeded by seniority of vibration to a great extent. The audiences receiving teach/learnings without stimulus from publicity will be more greatly oriented towards illumination. Therefore, forget you the counting. “

Commentary: In the mysterious workings of life there are mechanisms of attraction in play. Each person is drawn to the experience, event, person or source of information that each needs. Therefore, we needn’t always proactively get on the megaphone.

Take, for instance, session #8.1 where Don says:

“Many people on the planet now want this material, but even though we disseminate it, they will not be aware it is available. Is there any possibility of creating some effect which I would call advertising, or is this against the principle of free will?”

Ra answered:

“Consider if you will the path your life experience has taken. Consider the coincidences and odd circumstances by which one thing flowed to the next. Consider this well. Each entity will receive the opportunity that each needs.

This information source-beingness does not have uses in the life-experience complex of each of those among your peoples who seek.“

I think this is a helpful principle to consider because Ra tells us to consider that each entity will—not “maybe” or “probably”—receive the opportunity that each needs. So, that which one experiences is a function of that which one is desiring on some level, in some way, in greater depth of purity and wholeness.

Now keep in mind that Ra is speaking of service that is offered from the standpoint of the Confederation. Positive humans and Confederation members do both seek to be of service to others, but the Confederation is not operating by the same playbook. They have different constraints upon them than we do. The final session I was going to read for consideration is [17.30] where Ra says:

“The best way of service to others is the constant attempt to seek to share the love of the Creator as it is known to the inner self. This involves self-knowledge and the ability to open the self to the other-self without hesitation. This involves, shall we say, radiating that which is the essence, or the heart, of the mind/body/spirit complex.”

“…the best way for each seeker in third density to be of service to others is unique to that mind/body/spirit complex. This means that the person must then seek within itself the intelligence of its own discernment as to the way it may best serve others. This will be different for each, there is no best, there is no generalization, nothing is known.” The spirit of that passage overlaps with what Jim and Austin said. In fact, Jim quoted #17.2, which speaks to this as well.

You asked for discussion of practical ideas. I think that underneath the practical idea is simply—though difficultly—learning to be yourself. Learn now to drop pretense and unnecessary inhibition, as well as self-rejection and fear and social anxiety, so you can live as you are, and be true to who you are. Not only will this authentic selfhood radiate effortlessly from you and lighten your environment and even the planet, but it will also find its way into your actions. This can happen whether, like you said, you speak to somebody about some somewhat outside the box topic like astrology or whether you’re simply able to be more present with somebody, to listen to them, to sense where they are in their journey and what service it is that they are seeking.

I think you may do more for their evolution to help them with an emotional difficulty or to be on a commonplace level than it would be to introduce them to esoteric concepts. Or perhaps you may sense that they want to venture outside of their bubble so you, like Jim was saying, drop seeds of mystery and greater reality. But you know what I think is the greatest disruptor to the narratives of separation? Which, of course, is what you want to do, right? I think that the greatest disruptor is love itself. Love is what you need to show if you want to help awaken people from the illusion of separation so that they begin to sense that it is an illusion, and that there is a greater understanding, a greater way, a progress, and a path that can be made. Express love to someone when it’s unexpected or undeserved. Express love about another person or group whom society deems unworthy of love. Find where there seem to be limits or conditions upon love and go beyond them. I think that is one of the greatest seeds you can drop, more so even than information. Information has its place and it can certainly help to open one’s mind and broaden someone’s perspective, but I think love is much more effective. That’s where I would conclude on love.

What do you guys think? Do you have any further thoughts?

I agree with what you said.

It’s a bit of Charles Eisenstein in what you just said, like he would call offering them a new story.

Yeah, the concept and my notion of disrupting came via Eisenstein, too.

Like the whole idea is that—especially like you were talking about—if it seems like somebody doesn’t deserve love, it usually means that it’s society generally making that claim and not the Creator. If there is a situation where nobody would love a particular person, then that person may become conditioned to not receive love. As such, receiving love would be an event that is so powerful that it just disrupts their cycle completely. To be offered a new story and a new path opens up a new doorway for them. You can do this for them just by offering them acceptance and love at a difficult moment.

As a continuation on the topic of people who feel they don’t deserve love, I want to talk about a book I’m reading right now called Just Mercy that explores the topic of death row inmates, which is a group of people who are usually thought of as undeserving of love. So when somebody treats them with respect, it can be paradigm shifting for them. In this book there’s a black community in the South who felt disenfranchised by the larger community. They began receiving professional attention from a lawyer. It was kind of healing and uplifting for them that somebody would turn to them and or find their cause worthy and listen to their issues.

A final thought that rose up while listening to you guys and considering my own answer is that non-urgency is a running theme in all of our replies. You know, we speak of dropping and meeting people at their level. We also say not to push spiritual conversations or to make it a sense of urgency. Basically, don’t try to change people, you know. Just let them be where they are.

At the same time, I think we’re in a unique situation with our planet in that humanity is—I think a case could be made—destroying its own biosphere. We know that, according to Ra, this has happened before in the solar system because two planets self-destroyed previously. I think of Eckert Tolle talking about how humanity doesn’t have the luxury any longer of waiting to wake up. Waking up is the only solution to the ongoing ecological crisis and other crises related to that. Tolle says that if we don’t—and Tolle’s a pretty enlightened guy—then we’re on a path of destruction.

We in the Law of One community, of course, have a belief, a feeling, and an understanding that there’s a new density on its way and that gives us some hope and relief. But for those without that sense, I think there could be a lot of despair. What do you guys think about the necessity of waking up as it pertains to our circumstances now?

Jim, do you want to go first?

Okay, I think it’s a really good idea. I think that we are in a situation where we have what seems to be darker forces in charge of various governments and Middle East activities in the way of civil war, which is bringing about a lot of emotion, fear, and dread for the future. What to do right now and the story of separation, as Charles Eisenstein says, is being tested to its fullest as to whether or not it can provide any kind of a solution to this problem. The problem seems to have gotten so far in the direction of inter-species adversarial relationships, the degradation of the planet’s biosphere and atmosphere, a general lack of the harmony that is so potentially available to all of us. I think we’re in the perfect situation where a lot of people like Charles Eisenstein, Russell Brand, and others—maybe even L/L Research—can help out by providing an alternative story.

I think that it’s under these conditions that maybe we’re the ripest for blooming and for harvest, as opposed to the conditions we were under, say, twenty years ago when we were still thinking, well, everything’s okay, science will figure it out for us and, you know, we’re just getting better and better, smarter and smarter and soon we’ll have it all under control. Today, I think conditions are really ripe and we’re ready to go. We’re ready to make the choice to point the needle in one direction and to be of service to others.

I want to give a quick follow-up to Jim before you reply, Austin. I think that’s very salient what you describe regarding offering an alternative story. I think that’s what L/L is doing, along with many other sources, two of whom you’ve named. I think that’s got to be one of the best ways to go about it in terms of taking action, you know, outside of just radiating who you are. But what do you have a sense of necessity/urgency in doing that? Should there be one? I hear in our replies a sense of nonchalance about it. We do what we can and, of course, we can’t be too dedicated to outcome. And of course, you don’t want to come from fear. But should we feel more urgency?

You want to take that, Austin?

Yeah. I think that the sense of urgency is real and valid for both spiritual and non-spiritual life because like you said, Gary, we have approached and passed a point of no return as far as harm to the earth goes. Not that we can’t make the earth better again, but that it’s just harmed to a point where there’s species that have gone extinct because of human activity on the earth’s surface. So there is certainly an urgency there. In the Law of One it seems that how we handle this urgency, I think, is the important aspect.

A good analogy that I like to utilize is thinking about it in terms of rowing down a stream. Presently, the current is pretty strong , and with this sense of urgency there’s sort of a panic. The current of the stream is strong and we have to make sure that we don’t wreck this canoe. We can work really hard by paddling as hard as we can against the current to try our best to avoid destruction, or we can choose to struggle less by finding the wave that utilizes a light touch where we can move with the stream by making minor adjustments here and there to allow the canoe to flow with the river of and avoid destruction. Struggling too hard might cause us to get worn out and we could perhaps end up causing more trouble than we just did nothing at all. However, if you sit there and don’t do anything, then you might end up on the side of the river stalled out or completely overturned.

So, taking action is important and I think it is more important now than ever before. But it’s about how you take action. I just don’t think it’s going to work if you go into society with an attitude that I need to wake people up to spirituality because spirituality is going to save us. It’s not just a light switch like that. But, you can be active in providing service and acting as an example. There are lots of opportunities to offer love as an example and you can express the urgency that way. You can do your best to reach the representatives of our government if you believe that the government should change or be involved in fixing things. You can volunteer or just act as a point of light. You can still express that urgency by being active and pushing yourself to do so without pushing others to share your urgency. I guess I concur that there is urgency and that it is valid, but how we approach that urgency is what’s important.

Great replies from both of you. That’s an excellent analogy. That really hit home regarding dealing with strong currents in the river. I agree. If you come from a place of alarm or fear, then your reply may not be calibrated in the best way and may just cause a counter-measure or equal force in reaction to you. But at the same time you don’t want to necessarily do nothing, though beingness has a place, of course. Ra says there are no generalizations, so you can’t say there’s a one size fits all type of response, but there is a calibration of intensity that serves a circumstance. Austin, you hit it on a principle how one might go about calibrating that intensity. I think it is a way of flow in a way that works with a source like Tao Te Ching in terms of finding ways to work with the energies of the moment, and to shift those energies from where they are potentially to a new space to help evolve. But like what you said, Austin, it is not a switch.

But anyways, thank you both for those replies. Do you guys have anything further to offer?

Well, I would just say that the world we’re talking about, the one that Charles Eisenstein talks about—the more beautiful world our hearts know is true—is not a world that particularly responds to or contains fear. As such, it isn’t governed by fear in any way. So, I think that our approach in letting people know what is in our hearts and what is in their hearts should not include any kind of a feeling of panic or rush or fear or confusion. Just have faith, you know. Faith is the important thing in this density—that all is truly well no matter what things appear like. If you want to move into that more beautiful world our hearts know is true, then we need to behave as though we are already there in our own minds and we are helping other people to get there.

So, I’d say just have faith and whenever you come across an opportunity to share love, like Gary says, just do it. When in doubt, love.

That’s the perennial message of our type of spirituality. I think Michael Jackson summed it up in saying if you want to make the world a better place, take a look in the mirror and make a change.

Replies are formulating in my mind, but I think you guys both ended it eloquently and well, so…

We’re running a bit over, too.

Jim, would you like to say something to our listeners?

Well, friends, we really do appreciate you listening to us, and we especially appreciate when you send us questions. We are absolutely floored, flattered, and stunned when you send us your love. So please know that we’re sending you our love back. We know that all of us together can make this world a world full of love because that’s already the truth.

You’ve been listening to L/L Research’s podcast, In the Now. If you’ve enjoyed the show, please visit our websites, LLResearch.org and Bring4th.org. Thanks so much for listening and a special thank you to Vanessa for sending us your question. If you’d like to send us a question before the next show, please do so and read the instructions on our page at LLResearch.org/podcast. New episodes are published to the archive website every other Wednesday afternoon Eastern. Have a wonderful couple weeks and we’ll talk with you next time.