https://youtubetranscript.com/?v=X8Ln8WXiDTw
So I think that once again, the problem arises with again, the difficulty of understanding being and understanding consciousness. Again, it’s the same problem. Let me give you an example within yourself, right? Do you think that those demons, let’s say, those little patterns, do you think they don’t have agency? Of course they have agency, right? They know what they want, right? They know exactly what they want. And you can, if you’re sensitive, if you’re a little bit attentive, you can see that you’re actually talking to them, that you can talk to your demons, you know? And you make deals with your demons all the time, right? Imagine a smoker, right? So the smoker, what the demon wants is for that person to pretty much chain smoke all the time. That’s what the demon wants, right? And so then you make a deal with the demon. You say, okay, I’m gonna smoke three cigarettes a day, or whatever amount that you decide that you’re gonna smoke. And when you’re doing that, you’re negotiating with your demon, you know? And you know that if you just let it go, if you just let the demon pull you out, you would be smoking all the time, or if it’s drinking or whatever desire, if it’s just eating, you could just eat all the time, because that’s pulling you. But you make a deal. You’re like, okay, no, I’m going to negotiate with this. And so I think that it’s the same, it’s kind of the same thing going up. I think that agency is just a pattern of being. The problem with the matter in which we understand freedom is that we understand freedom as the capacity to do whatever you want. And I think that that’s really a misunderstanding of freedom. Freedom is the capacity to act from within your own self and not be fully, let’s say, determined by your outer circumstance, okay? And so that’s what agency is. So that’s what I think freedom and agency are. And so if that’s what freedom and agency are, then you can understand that a pattern has its own energy, like it has its own will and its own thing. And so it has the capacity to act. And then also because patterns are made of smaller patterns, it also has the capacity to manage those smaller patterns and then to let themselves get pulled in one direction or the other. So there is this, that’s what I think agency is. And so to me, the idea that you can pray to, that you can pray to the angel of a city, it’s like that’s what you’re doing when you write a letter of complaint to the city council. Who’s the city council or who’s the city? You write a letter of complaint to the city, who are you writing it to? You’re not writing it to anybody. You’re writing it to the city. And so you’re actually engaging, you’re praying to the city, you’re asking the city to do something for you. And it can answer. Does it mean it’s going to answer? Might not answer, might answer in a way you don’t like it to answer, but it can answer. And so to me, that’s just kind of how it works. And so the idea that you pray to God or that you pray to other beings, that it be either be to the pastor, you pray to the pastor. You ask the pastor to, I mean, people use the word prayer in such a special way. I know, I know. It’s not, the word pray just means to ask for something. It’s not, it’s not. That’s an English issue I know, because in Spanish and in Greek and other languages, the words are commonality, but when you say it in English, I just know a lot of Protestants in my head are just going, bing, bing, bing, bing, bing. Yeah, exactly. No, you don’t, but you do all the time, right? You ask someone to help you change your tire. You ask, so you’re constantly praying and beings answer your prayer. And so to me, the idea that you can pray to higher beings, you can ask for things, is to me is just not a big deal. And just the fact that you can pray to God, to me is that you can pray, that you can address your prayer to the highest, let’s say, I think is not a problem. I do think this is where maybe you will totally disagree with me, but I do think that often, because the word God also is so wide, I think that often when someone prays to God to ask God for some very petty thing, I think usually they’re not really praying to God. They’re actually praying to something that’s lower. They just don’t totally know. So that’s maybe the more, let’s say, idea of a Catholic person who would ask some saint to find a parking place for them or something like that. That’s really a very kind of petty, very kind of petty low thing. But it doesn’t mean that it’s not also possible. We don’t understand, people don’t understand, like again, it’s always taking consciousness for granted. It’s not understanding the manner in which consciousness, which language, which logos participates in how the world lays itself out. It does participate in how the world lays itself out. Whether you know to what extent it does, what’s the limit of that, is not that easy to determine, I think.