YARDSTICKS Allow us to begin this interaction this evening of your time, with the entitlement, Yardsticks. We will use this nomenclature, this terminology, to talk about relativity... in a sense, relativity in perspective, in point of view... to simply remind you once again, in yet another way, that each and every individual is his or her own reality. And whatever measuring rods, whatever yardsticks you may use to measure the reality you believe to be true, are not applicable to you to measure the reality that someone else believes is true for his validity. The yardsticks you create in your reality are valid for your reality, and will very accurately measure the ideas going on in your reality, in your belief structure. But they cannot be used to measure the validity in someone else's reality, because they have a different set of yardsticks, and they are, very often, of quite different lengths. Many of you are familiar with what your physicists refer to as the time dilation effect. The idea simply is, that as you move faster and faster in your physical universe, attaining a great deal of the percentage of the speed of light, the faster you go -- the more time slows down apparently, from your point of view. That is while you are remaining in your physical dimension. The idea of the hyperspace travel we talked about, the instantaneous teleportation, is quite another thing and does not apply to this idea. But while you remain in your physical universe, if you go very fast, very close to the speed of light, you will find that time will slow down for the individual doing the traveling. Now, all things being relative as many of you understand... to the individual doing the traveling it will seem as if everything is moving at the same rate of time. To them it will seem that everyone else has sped up very rapidly, and that they are still going about their business doing the same things they always do at the rate that they are comfortable with. Not only, in that sense, does time slow down, but all objects will in a sense, shorten in the direction that they are traveling. So very literally if you have a yardstick, let us say, on your hypothetical space craft, and you are moving at a particular direction, at a great percentage of the speed of light... to an individual standing still, relatively speaking, your yardstick on the ship, by the time you are a good fraction of the speed of light, will actually only be as long as, let us say, approximately three inches. You will still think it is a yard long -- three of your feet, not three of your inches. And of course, everything you measure in the ship will still appear to be its normal size, because everything has shrunk accordingly. So it has all stayed in one particular coherent system, and you cannot tell the difference. This is analogous to the idea we are talking about, because every single individual vibrates at a slightly different rate of energy, and has a different perspective about what is true and real for him. Yes, you have, as we have discussed, obviously a collective agreed-upon reality that you share general ideas, and sometimes some very specific ideas within. But nonetheless being an individual, by definition, will allow you to always recognize that the yardstick you use to measure things with --and we are speaking both literally and philosophically -- will not be exactly precisely the same length as someone else's. And they will measure things in a slightly different way. To each of you the equations will seem to come out correctly. You will measure three feet; they will measure three feet; but that three feet is relative. And if you compare them, they may be a different three feet; but you can at least agree enough to get the job done. Recognize simply, that what we share with you is our yardstick, the measurement by which we decide what works for us in our civilization. We share these ideas in a general way with you, but in no way shape or form, do we ever mean to imply that your yardstick, your measurements, your ideas, your points of view, are not equally valid. And in a sense, not more important for you to pay attention to -- because they are. Because they are the yardsticks that measure the reality /you/ have decided is real. So remember: even when we describe and define, down to the last inch, the last millimeter, our yardstick, you may find similar marks on yours. But that is your version of ours, and it is never meant to be that you must do things in exactly the way we do them. Being an individual you will always do something in your own way slightly uniquely, or greatly uniquely, but it will always be slightly different from the way anyone else does it. That is to be expected, and that is to be cherished. *For it is the variance; it is the different points of view; it is the* Relativity, which allows there to be an ongoing discovery of new attitudes, new perspectives, new points of view in life. That something will always be seen slightly differently through another pair of eyes, will add to the enrichment of all the different ways that Creation has of manifesting Itself to be.