The conversation begins with an e-mail from Anne K.
Back-story: Anne K. contacts me via e-mail after reading a newly published transcript of my session with Elias (#1364) where I discuss having problems writing and I’m also trying to understand how to make the work I want to do fun instead of a chore. Anne wants to know how I’m applying Elias’s advice to me, since she’s dealing with similar challenges.
At this time, I’ve been isolating myself to the point of almost madness for several years, after fleeing the scene of my life coming completely apart from about 2000 through 2002. I’ve so isolated myself that days go by — weeks and months go by — with no one to talk to except myself or my cats. It seems that years have gone by without a like-minded person to talk to. Therefore, I’m thrilled that I’ve finally drawn to myself someone to converse with about Elias’s information. I’m practically bursting with pent-up desire to talk to someone about what I’m going through. I feel a bit embarrassed by this (just as I feel hesitant now to expose myself by putting these communications on this website) but I manage to allow myself to communicate fairly freely.
Some individuals choose, in your terms, ‘bad’ events or experiences. In this, they may not be individually for themselves creating their own drama, but they may be offering themselves definite examples within experiences to clarify information. It is not uncommon, within what we term to be a ‘final focus,’ (grinning) as you have chosen, to be offering a barrage of events that you may all view as negative or bad situations. It is not a rule, either!… It is only not uncommon. It is a concentration of events, as you believe that faster is better! Therefore, you shall offer yourself much information within a small time element, for you believe this shall be more helpful to your transition.
Elias –transcript 156
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E-mal to Anne K. February 26, 2006
How excellent to hear from someone grappling with similar issues AND interested in Elias! I remember reading with interest your transcript about writing because I had also been struggling with writing. To be more precise, I was struggling with not writing while convinced that I HAD TO WRITE. I, too, finally quit trying, although doing so did not result in writing, even though I’d hoped it would. I still nose around the subject from time to time to assess its state of decay or possible resurrection. Elias would point out that there’s plenty of writing-with-ease going on right here in this e-mail, so my “Writing is a struggle/I can’t write” truth has a big hole in it, just waiting for me to drive through.
It’s funny to have the transcripts show up so far behind “real time.” Like you, when I read about the trials, tribulations, and explorations of fellow questers, I often wonder what happened next. Did the doors of perception eventually swing wide? Was there a magical breakthrough? Or did awareness expand bit by infuriatingly slow bit, interspersed with long periods of feeling completely baffled and paralyzed? Did acceptance only dawn after months — years — of thrashing frantically on the sharp hook of the perception of failure? Or did automatic responses continue to undermine good intentions? Did joy eventually shine through all that useless weeping in a mire of judgment and fear? Or was progress repeatedly stalled by an inability to get a grip on comparing self with others?
In my case, all of the above, plus an assortment of other self-defeating (or information-offering) actions.
My first Elias session (#1248) occurred the week before I had to appear in court for a bankruptcy hearing. I was a self-discounting wreck, although not because of the bankruptcy per se. That was just another symptom/piece of information in a long, painful series of manifestations I’d presented to myself over a period of several years. The short and simple explanation for that financial adventure goes like this: I’ve been self-employed since 1983 (I’m an English major, a direction so formless that I believe I can do anything), and during the technology boom years of the 90s, I started my third and fourth businesses by teaching myself to work with computers and programming. By 1993, I had morphed into a high-priced information technology consultant, designing and developing custom software for companies like Intel and Pacific Gas & Electric. Money, power, status—what a trip!
While it was an educational adventure, it was so demanding that I didn’t have much of a life. I was in the process of transitioning to a new career path (and my work issues rose up in all their confounding glory) when the technology bubble burst, sending me into a financial tailspin. My attention was riveted on my uncertain future. My self-discounting reached new heights. I manifested a series of extremely “uncomfortable” events and stayed on the hamster wheel of automatic responses for YEARS. Ugh!
Although I’d been avidly studying and trying to apply Seth’s information since 1976, I now see that, as liberating and inspiring as I found the Seth material, I misunderstood it or failed to understand it completely. Therefore, I often tended to use the information in ways that fed all my negative tendencies.
So, here I was approaching what appeared to be the edge of a cliff, creating loss after painful loss, trying to use “you create your own reality” to reorient my attention, and beating myself up because I couldn’t seem to figure out how to make these concepts work when I most needed them to. The worse I felt, the harder I struggled to free myself, and the more firmly I impaled myself. I thrashed around in what seemed like an endless dark loop of relentless fear, ceaseless discounting of myself, and all the other negative habits of attention that keep so many of us feeling stuck.
In late 2002, I fled the scene of disaster (discussed in my first session), but continued to wallow in the mire of my misery, confusion, and frustration (second, third, and fourth transcripts). Then I fled again to an even more distant locale (trying to get away from all those pesky associations, while carrying with me the source of all my pesky associations, my own danged self). I continued to struggle, but slowly, slowly, oh, so slowly, by reading Elias and listening to Abraham, I finally began to “get it,” and was able to more consistently live the concepts I had earlier thought I understood.
Now, I’m finally—mostly, usually, sometimes, kind of—able to stay pointed in the “I get it” direction, although I now also realize that doesn’t mean I won’t fall prey yet again (and again) to my old automatic ways at some point.
And although I’m now doing much better at steering my ship, I want to emphasize that it seems to require the attentiveness and diligence I formerly used when training horses. The fact remains that at this tender point in living my always-a-choice state of “enlightenment,” I still fall easily into the old habits of attention. And perhaps that’s how it will always be. As Elias keeps reminding us, they aren’t called “automatic responses” for nothing.
I remember being at a talk where Ram Dass remarked, a very long time ago, that after all his years of study and practice, he had not succeeded in ridding himself of any of his “stuff.” The only difference his practice made was that he now recognizes more quickly when he’s “in his stuff,” and more quickly gets out of those states of mind.
Although I was sure I understood that when I heard him say it, in fact I did not. I still believed that a breakthrough would solve—what?—everything, of course. Now, however, I realize that “enlightenment” is a ceaseless drill. Notice and choose. Notice and choose. Notice and choose. Incredibly freeing, yes, but requiring endless, highly challenging attentiveness combined with the often colossal effort of making yourself look at things differently. It seems that the reality of living “enlightenment” is both exactly as magical and not at all as magical as we’d imagined.
So, I’d have to say that a major aspect of “enlightenment” during this long, dark period came as a big aha! for me when I finally “got it” that “getting it” does not mean never having to “get it” again. After enlightenment, chop wood, carry water, and keep remembering to choose and re-choose and choose again (and again and again, ad infinitum) the enlightened/”I have choices” perspective.
You see, I thought I understood the concept of choice, but I didn’t really get the part about “it’s ALWAYS a choice.” No matter how often I read that, I continued expecting that at some point I’d reach an understanding of the concepts that would cause a “once and for all” shift in perception that would eliminate (!!!) my problems in various areas. After all, I’d been studying and trying to practice this stuff for SO LONG!!! And I was SOOOO clear about it, wasn’t I? And I’m SOOOO smart! What the fuck was WRONG WITH ME??!?
Anyway, I caused myself a lot of trouble by discounting myself for what I thought was failure in this area, when the problem remained that I simply didn’t understand what the task really was.
Have I brought you up to the present? Have things improved on the work front? Ha! I’m in the strangest situation now, and I’ve had no one to talk to about it in an Elias-oriented manner, so I hope you don’t mind if this spills forth like a long-dammed-up torrent.
Here I am now in western Washington (since Halloween day 2003), and I’ve been living frugally off the spoils of my bankruptcy for three years (I was one year in Santa Fe after fleeing Tucson). In Arizona, where I filed, you get to keep up to $100,000 equity in your house. I had always been a renter, but when I moved back to Arizona from northern California, I bought a house for the first time. After six uncomfortable years in Arizona (doncha love using “uncomfortable” to describe various states of agony and despair?), as I plunged into the toilet of financial disaster, I sold my house myself and ended up with almost the whole legal amount. I had no idea that I would need to finance years of reorientation, but that’s how it has played out. You would think that rather magically supplying myself with the means to carry on after this series of unfortunate events would have helped me in the “trust yourself” department, but noooooo…
In the summer of 2005 — late July, it was — my supply of funds was a few months from being used up. I’d been applying Elias/Abraham information diligently in an effort to keep myself calm, but my automatic response of projecting into the future/recalling past disasters/financial fear/distrust of self was being strongly triggered. What would I do? How would I live? I’ve ruined my life! All I do is ruin my life!
It was at this point that I had one of my major “aha!” revelations. I finally totally got/experienced the concept that everything is fine in the present, that staying in the present is the key to everything. For about three days, I was in a state of the most exhilarating, expansive, complete trust and — well, it’s hard to put it into words, even for a yakker like me. During those few amazing days, though, I also had brief flashes of the most chilling fear, as though I were walking a wire strung between two skyscrapers and I’d suddenly looked down and felt shocked and terrified to notice where I was. What I experienced in those fearful moments was my apprehension about trying to live this way in a world that insists that you cannot live this way, with “no thought of the morrow,” as it were. Could this really work or would I lose my balance and plunge into the abyss?
During this period, it came into my head that maybe it was time to find a way to make some money, get some little job. But I don’t look for jobs; they just come to me. And I would like a job that paid me on contract, where I worked with people I liked, maybe even with people I knew. And I’d like to be doing something that I had some feeling for, maybe something I believed in as a “cause.” And the job ought to be flexible and free feeling. That flashed through my mind in the most casual, easy way. A few days later, a friend, executive director of a local land trust, called and practically begged me to help her out by doing a temporary job (four and a half months) that fit all my criteria.
[There’s another interesting piece in here. In October 2005, two months after the job started, I manifested moving from the little old place I’d been renting for two years into a beautiful 4000 square foot house right on the water, with a master suite as big as the former little house, and a hot tub on the top deck, and three ovens, and a giant three car garage (garages are rare here) and…well, suffice to say, it was many orders of magnitude above my previous student-like digs. In fact, it was more like my former life, “before the fall,” as it were. And I got to have all this opulence for the same rent I was paying for the little old place.
But that’s another story of perception shifting that I’ll talk about later, because I’m interested in objectively dissecting the process of manifesting this (and everything), being that understanding objectively the “how” of manifestation is my favorite subject.]
So, here I am working again after almost three years adrift. And I found working at this little part-time gig was very distracting, so even though I wasn’t making much money, my attention was redirected away from my financial worries during the period of this job. By mid-December, though, that job was over. I had extended my “months to live” money (very, very, very skimpily) to April. I was okay for about two weeks after the job ended, but as the new year rolled around, I was back in my fear about money and survival all over again. And it seemed bigger and badder than ever. I walked around in a state near panic. I woke up filled with dread. I could hardly sleep. Where was my revelation about staying in the safe present? I couldn’t seem to get back to that, no matter how hard I tried.
It took a while for the small voice to get through to me, focused as I was on the din of my fear, but at some point in January I finally started listening to Abraham CDs around the clock (which I’d been doing in the summer of 2005, also). Do you know about Abraham? They speak through Esther Hicks, and I subscribe to a weekly CD excerpted from Abraham workshops. It’s the same information that Elias presents, but from a slightly different perspective—more folksy sounding, and deliberately distorted (it seems to me) according to some of our mass beliefs in ways that make it easier to hear. I find the Abraham information particularly useful because they answer questions from the audience in ways that give concrete examples of how to apply the concepts, over and over and over and over. When I’ve spun off into outer darkness, listening to those CDs enables me to replace my inner fearful chatter with a voice of acceptance and reassurance, reminding me how to get back to trusting myself when I’ve lost my grip. It works better for me than Elias when I’m freaked out because the information comes in as a voice from the outside, soothing, clarifying, inspiring, and determined to get us to shift our attention toward what we prefer. However, when I’m struggling with my fear, I tend to forget this “choice” to listen constantly to the Abraham CDs, along with all other empowering choices.
Within a few days of round-the-clock immersion in Abraham, I returned to living comfortably in the limbo that has been my life for so very long now. Ah, what a relief!
So, where am I now that I’ve, once again, more or/and less, reoriented myself to the spacious present? (And let me re-emphasize that this choice of staying in the present remains, for me, a very on and off affair—what a trick of focus and what dedication it requires!) I’m now going in the direction of working for myself again, although another small, temporary money-earning gig has been manifested as a tranquilizer. I’m still grappling with how to actually apply the concept of “work without feeling like I’m working” to what I really want to do. As usual, I was convinced that I understood that idea, but I just know that I haven’t quite got the experiential piece. There’s been no aha! It remains a concept.
[I’ll interject an aside here that didn’t go into this e-mail to Anne. I’m now aware that this concept of “working without feeling like you’re working” is not alien to me. I realize I’ve done it a lot. In fact, I’d say I have a gift for working this way. AND, that said, what I notice is that trying to write any work-related material quickly becomes a chore because I fall into expressing a limiting automatic response to one of my core truths, “Do things right or bad things will happen!”
When I try to write work-related/publishable material of any sort, I immediately project my attention outside myself–what should I say so that THEY will approve/like it/want me. I have to pay attention while writing for the Shift Diaries because I tend toward that same automatic response which locks me into a mode of believing that there’s some standard of perfect expression of myself that I must attain or suffer awful consequences. I read and reread looking for typos and anything not expressed clearly. I drive myself nuts and make writing a chore. So, enjoy any mistakes I miss. Point them out to me, if you like. It will help me practice not expressing the belief that I must be “perfect” to get through life.]
I notice I’m not doing anything that mass beliefs would consider “getting ready to start my business.” What I am doing is feeling around inside myself and noticing my subjective communications when I consider taking various actions that are usually associated with starting a business. I’m trying to stay quiet enough to tune into subjective communications (impulses, imagination, intuition, etc.) that nudge me in fruitful directions. I’m trying to stay attuned to how I do things—how I make things happen effortlessly. In other words, I’m practicing NOT forcing my energy or worrying, at which I am world class! (Why isn’t there an Olympics for these skills?) I’m steering in the direction of trusting that things will unfold in directions that please me, which in concrete terms means I’m choosing to redirect my attention (repeatedly) toward trusting myself instead of becoming side-tracked by my fears. I’m still listening to Abraham a lot each day.
Of course, I also find it challenging to stay off the “hurry up and relax before it’s too late” hamster wheel. Talk about a contradictory expression of energy! But I really do feel that if I don’t figure out how to relax “in time,” bad things will happen. (There’s another variation on my truth.) Since I created exactly that scenario–not relaxing in time to pull out of my plunge into the abyss–during the dismal years when my life was coming apart, I have strong associations in this direction.
To counter these unpleasant associations, I’ve recently made up a little song to sing to myself, “Things come to me.” It came into being when I decided to notice that preferred shifts in my life just came to me, that I don’t tend to work hard for things others think take effort, and that things I want “just happen” effortlessly. This was a major theme of that last transcript. It’s a major theme of this focus, and it leads me to constant questions about the appropriateness of this tendency. Is it okay if I lead a magical life or will there eventually be hell to pay for preferring to be a grasshopper when so many others are convinced that they have to be ants? Do I need to wear ant-colored camo so the ants don’t realize there’s a grasshopper in their midst? Maybe that’s the question we’re all grappling with: Is it okay to be who and what I uniquely am?
May 7th, 2006 at 8:50 pm
This is a spooky little website, possum.