By nighttime, I was getting tired of all this fear. I don’t want to go through the next month or so this way. But what to do about it?

I thought about how much of my anxiety comes from not being able to “predict the future” the way I seem to think I can if I have a big pile of money available. When I had money, it seemed that I could just buy my way out of challenges – hire people to help me, pay for interim solutions if things didn’t work exactly as I’d wanted them to, just buy whatever it seemed I needed. When I had money, I assumed I could do whatever it took to make things comfortable and workable without the pressure of having to magically manifest solutions out of thin air. I relaxed because I believed I could solve problems with money, but the fact is that I still created things the way I do, which is magically.

Having money available simply provided me with the perception of a safety net. I took the pressure off myself to predict the future. Money = perception I can comfortably handle any possible future needs.

So, what’s going on now is that I’m creating circumstances in relation to this move in a sort of last moment, seat-of-the-pants, out-of-thin-air fashion that seems to be my way, but I feel tense about it because I believe that having money is what makes this approach safe. Otherwise, it’s scary.

But with or without a big pile of money giving me the illusion of safety, the truth is (for me) that things just come to me in unusual ways. And while this approach, this magical approach, doesn’t seem like something I can count on (the way money does), the fact is, since this is how I do things, it would work better for me if I felt safe using this magical approach, rather than feeling unsafe just because I don’t have a pile of cash to create with if this approach “doesn’t work.”  I know feeling safe is always a choice, but when it seems that I’m walking this magical approach tightrope without a net, the idea that I could simply choose to feel safe seems incredibly challenging to practice.

But, the fact is, I don’t have to live out of (and in the fear triggered by) that belief equation: money = trust and safety. I could look at things differently. To do so, I need to find ways prove to myself the unfamiliar equation: trust = money and everything else I desire.

“The magical approach” is a Seth phrase, one I’ve always loved. I’ve had plenty of experiences to support my “belief” in it. But trying to RELY on it under pressure (pressure I create by believing that magic isn’t reliable) always seems tricky. Yet, I notice that this is how my life works. And the magical approach is what I’ve dedicated myself to understanding and trusting. So, why not focus on my preference for magical creating from a position of recognizing, acknowledging, and appreciating the way I make things happen, instead of from a position of doubt, discounting, and fear.

When I told a friend about connecting with someone who’s going to rent the house I’m now in, and how he’s offering to buy some of my stuff, and how he generously offered to help me out by paying for the whole place (his rent on the apartment and my rent on the house) for the month of June, and how he said I could leave all my stuff here and go to Santa Fe and get things figured out, and come back later for my stuff if that would help, she was amazed that this magical rabbit had suddenly come out of my hat. She wanted to hear the story of how I’d connected with him.

I told her this had come about from following an impulse to take a walk mid-morning one day (not my usual walking time), meeting a guy on the trail and talking with him (my usual approach to strangers – I just talk with anybody about my life and what I’m dealing with), and impulsively telling him I had an apartment to rent, and he knew someone who might be interested, which is how I met my magical rabbit. When I finished the story, my friend said, “This is exactly how you do things. This is how things always work for you.” For her, this was confirmation that my decision to move was a good one and was going to proceed magically.

And this magical connection with someone whose desires meshed perfectly with mine came about as a result of not forcing myself in directions prompted by my fears and doubts as the pressure to change things here continued to build.

I only put one ad in the local paper to rent the apartment, and I did that against my better judgment — against my inner sense that I didn’t need to do that. I didn’t like the results of that ad, so I didn’t do it again. And that choice was hard for me, because it seemed that I ought to try to rent the apartment — everyone who knew of my situation thought I ought to rent the apartment ASAP. Logically, renting the apartment immediately seemed a sensible direction to go for a person who wanted to manifest some cash. But I didn’t want to do it. And it wasn’t because of all my reasons for not wanting to deal with a tenant. It didn’t feel right to try to find a tenant by putting an ad in the paper. I wanted a perfectly suitable tenant to just come to me.

And during what seemed to be this sinking ship phase of my life here, I didn’t flog myself to go out and get a couple of weird little jobs to keep myself financially stable. I allowed time to pass “doing nothing” but expressing myself in the Shift Diaries and communicating via e-mail with my new Elias friend, Anne. And I made those choices despite the fact that I didn’t understand how things could work out without taking action to solve my dilemma. But it didn’t seem that I ought to frantically pursue work – I had no inclination in that direction that was not the result of fear. Of course, what I expected was that something would just come to me.

And a project that would have enabled me to quickly make enough money to move did come to me. It appeared out of nowhere and then disappeared, strangely seeming to save me and just as strangely, seeming to leave me stranded again. The preparation to do the project (technical stuff that I wasn’t completely familiar with – oooo, the unfamiliar is everywhere!) took considerable unpaid time, during which my attention was distracted from my financial worries (because I thought the project would solve them), and during which time I started the Shift Diaries. When the money I thought I was going to get from the project didn’t materialize due to the client’s  financial problems (more reflections, as always), even though I felt as though I was walking a high wire without a net at this point, I also had a faint sense that the “time passing” as a result was simply another link in a chain, another step on a path that I was magically creating.

Then a week or so ago I got the distinct impression that I was going to move. It felt like a prison door swinging open. I felt exhilarated, liberated, and confused. How was this going to happen? Where would I go? When would I go? Why can’t we collar that small voice and get more details? Another week or so passed in my usual state of Limbo, and then I followed some small impulses that led to things starting to come together for the move.

During the past few months, I’ve been practicing a lot of exposure (Elias highly recommends exposure — as in, “I find myself acceptable and have nothing to hide,” not as in “I reveal all to everyone, willy nilly.”), beginning with my communication with Anne K. that started three months ago. I’ve published the Shift Diaries. I’ve been open about my situation when I talk to people (I naturally tend to expose everything, rather willy nilly, because I discover what I’m doing by speaking about it to an audience). I finally felt much more accepting of where I am. And, just as Elias and all the rest of those dead guys promise, without forcing energy in response to my financial situation and my desire for things to change, simply by allowing, magically solutions began to emerge.

So, I sat in my bed last night and thought back over all the ways things have come to me “out of the blue,” so to speak. I said to myself, “You worry about the cats being a possible difficulty whenever you want to find a new rental, but the truth is the cats have never been a problem. You always create places where having the cats is not an issue. Either the people before have had animals, or it doesn’t come up at all, or the landlord is won over by your energy.”

I told myself, “You worry about how money is going to work out, but the truth is, ways to generate money just come to you.” And I went through a review of all the past strange connections and impulses that led to jobs and work.

I said to myself, “You worry about the actual logistics of moving and the difficulties of doing it by yourself, but the truth is, you always are helped when you move and things go smoothly.” And I reviewed all the strange and magical happenings that have allowed me to move fairly easily.

I told myself, “You worry about finding a place to live that will suit you, yet the truth is that you find wonderful houses on the first try that are the envy of everyone.” And I reviewed my magical manifestations in that area.

And as I did this review of the workings of the magical approach in my life, I stopped generating that signal of fear. And I kept saying “the truth is,” because this is what’s true for me. The way I do things doesn’t fit conventional “truths” about “correct ways” to accomplish desired ends, yet it seems to be my truth that the magical approach works for me. As usual, conflict arises for me in relation to using the magical approach when I compare how I do things with how I think I’m supposed to do things – with how it seems others do things, and when I feel a need to justify or defend my own unique approach, and when I question and doubt myself for doing things the way I naturally do them. And when I worry that the magical approach isn’t as reliable as a pocketful of credit cards.

Money = whatever you believe it does.

Trusting myself and the magical approach = things I desire magically come to me.

 Test

I wouldn’t worry about whether or not you get too many comments on your blog.  Just relax and know that those who need to get information will find it there when they need it.  That seems to be how things really work.  I would also think that perhaps Elias would say to you  that any entries you put into your blog are most efficiently done if you have no expectation of anyone reading it.  Just share the information that you wish to share. Those who need it will find it.

I replied: I agree with you wholeheartedly. If I were completely in the present with my attention totally on myself, and filled with trust and self-acceptance, and capable of stopping automatic responses before I even triggered them (and able to leap tall buildings with a single bound – why not that, too?), then I wouldn’t worry about anything.

And if I would just RELAX and freely express myself without any expectation or concern for what others might think or where it might get me, yes, that would be most excellent, also.

And, of course, if I lived out of the awareness that I attract everyone and everything I desire without effort – that would be terrific, too.

And if I could put the brakes on fearing the crap that I attract to myself, I could use the concept about “you attract everything” to dispel many worries, I’m sure.

And what I notice is, all that intellectual knowing – because I certainly do KNOW I shouldn’t worry and shouldn’t expect and shouldn’t have this, that, and the other unenlightened response, oh, do I ever KNOW all that stuff – but all that conceptual blather doesn’t make much of a dent in the automatic responses that I (and everyone else I know) trigger pretty routinely.

And that’s what I’m exploring out loud for all the world to see in the Shift Diaries. I assume it will be useful for others, as it is for me, to notice that talking the talk just don’t cut it here in Shift Land, and that walking the walk can be a danged challenging proposition. I’m struggling to live with an awareness that my intellectual knowing, understanding, agreement with, or belief in the concepts gives me essentially no leverage. In fact, the idea that “knowing” this stuff is sufficient to shift the way we deal with things seems to be a major source of Shift Trauma. It is for me, anyway.

Because when we assume that we’ve got the concepts down cold, many of us tend take it kind of hard when the reality we’re creating gets a little ouchy. In fact, people like me tend to feel like MORONS when we’re having trouble creating an appealing reality.

And I was very good at talking the talk. Exceptional, in fact. I KNEW this stuff – ask me anything about reality creation! And yet, here I am, living for years in this weird sort of Limbo, struggling with my automatic responses and discounting myself for that struggle.

Those of us who’ve been exploring these concepts all KNOW (or think we know) what works and what doesn’t. We’re bright people. We’ve read Seth and Elias and listened to Abraham. Over and over and over and OVER. These concepts aren’t exactly higher mathematics. They’re simple. Really, really, really simple. We can sum them up in a sentence or two. It seems as though we should get it, and just get on with living it. How hard could it be?

But when it comes to practicing these concepts in every day life, that’s where I’ve gotten to experience exactly how hard it can be. That’s where I struggle and that’s where I add to the challenge of practicing this information by discounting myself for struggling with it. I know the concepts. I’m a damned genius about the concepts. But when it comes to applying them in the middle of an everyday shitstorm of automatic responses that I’ve triggered in myself, those concepts go out the window. I’m worried! I’m scared! I don’t want to accept whatever unpleasantness I’ve created – I want it stop and stop NOW! And don’t get me started on expectation! I’m filled with expectation at every turn. I want to do things and have things change!

So, yes, I agree, I shouldn’t worry, blah, blah, blah. And I still do. And then I wake up, and reorient myself, and carry on. And then I trigger another automatic response, and get that signal of worry jangling all through me, and thrash around trying to figure out how to STOP it, and run on my hamster wheel of distress for a long or short period. Then I wake up, reorient myself, and carry on.

And Elias tells us, soothingly, as we continue to express dismay at finding ourselves floundering, yet again, in the “uncomfortable” mire of our automatic responses, “How can you address these issues unless you become aware of them?”

How indeed?

I didn’t take it personally when I trained horses and the one I was working with had an undesirable automatic response. It was simply something to work on. No big deal. I’d shift the horse’s attention back to something soothingly familiar, and then gradually, calmly move back in the unfamiliar and desired direction until the horse developed a new automatic response, the one I preferred. Sometimes this happened very quickly; sometimes it took days. It didn’t matter to me. I knew where I was headed and had complete confidence in my ability to get there. I knew how to live the concepts of horse training.

Working with my own self as the horse and the rider is much more challenging. I’m not one step removed from the automatic response – I’m in it. I’m not so calm during my upsets, not so understanding of them, not so confident in my ability to redirect my energy where I would prefer it to go. With myself, I do all the things I would never do with a horse. I push myself. I’m impatient. I’m critical. I’m demanding. I’m disappointed.

And yet, I KNOW exactly what concept applies to the trouble I’m having. I know the answer, teacher! I know! I know! Call on me!

The part I’m really committed to practicing now is omitting the self-discounting. I want to slide in and out of my automatic responses without beating up on myself for not being more AWARE. For not being aware enough to avoid triggering myself. For not being aware enough not to worry or expect or judge myself or WHATEVER. Yet, the discounting is another automatic response.

Tricky, isn’t it?

Before I start this entry, I’ll put this request into the ethers: I’m looking for a house-sitting or caretaking position in Santa Fe, a place to land until I can find more permanent quarters there. Or if anyone knows of a nice place to rent, let me know. I have excellent local references!It was only on Monday that I decided to move back to Santa Fe, and, despite apparent obstacles and challenges, I was feeling highly energized and dauntless. Over the next couple of days, logistical realities and potential problems began to preoccupy my attention (do I hear anyone saying, “Stay in the present”?) By Thurdsay, I had worked myself into a froth of anxiety about this move. Night fell and I began to notice a sort of dull paralysis. I wanted to sleep, but it only 10 PM, way too early for that. I didn’t want to do anything. I wanted to disappear and not think about anything. I felt an urge to go to the computer and finish transcribing a couple of Elias sessions. One session was Anne K.’s and it had some soothing advice for me.

Part of my anxiety about moving develops as I contemplate the physical details of packing and getting all my STUFF to another state (get it?). I wish developing a matter transporter was a higher priority for modern science. We can put a man on the moon, but in order to move to another state, I still have pack everything up, load up a truck, and schlep my whole life bodily across the miles. Thinking about all the associated logistics and the sheer labor required gets me feeling overwhelmed, anxious, and tense. However, Elias addressed this directly with advice about how to avoid feeling overwhelmed by any task (Anne is complaining of a feeling of being blocked — “this wall”, and notices that it comes up when she tries to write) [emphasis mine]:

ELIAS: But you are not present in the now with your attention, for what becomes overwhelming is the anticipation of the finished product, and that becomes distracting, and the attention moves to that, which is a projection to the future. And in that projection, the task, or the activity, becomes a chore, for you’re not actually doing it, you are merely thinking about it. Therefore, as you continue to think about it, and you continue to project in anticipation of the finished product, you’re not actually present and participating in the process.

Which, this is what you are experiencing in relation to your movement in this information, and the movement within yourself in trusting yourself and generating this acceptance and applying these concepts in practical application within your focus.  For you’re projecting your attention in anticipation of what you assess to be the final product, which is the reason that I express to you to remember that this is an ongoing process; there is no finish line. And in this, yes, you shall move into more and more of an expression of acceptance and understanding and ease and allowance of yourself in relation to your preferences and your freedom, but what you are experiencing in this feeling of this wall, the wall is the lack of actual action and participation of doing now and being present with yourself now. The wall is the evidence to yourself to pull your attention back into the now and to be present in your participation of your process.

Since making this decision to move back to a more familiar area, I’ve been wondering (complicating by questioning myself) if “moving back to the familiar” is a good idea. It feels good to me, but as I dissected this choice on a symbolic level, I wondered about it. Was I going backwards? Was I taking a step in the ”wrong” direction. Aren’t we supposed to be forging ahead into the unfamiliar? Elias also addressed that very topic in Anne’s session from 2003: 

ANNE: I had a dream of cars, of driving—again it’s probably the same theme—driving a beautiful silver car that I really did like very much, but had very much difficulty in controlling it and maneuvering it. So, in the end, I decided to give it back, and instead I took the more familiar car. And when I went to go visit the more familiar car in the garage, it was all brand new, shiny, even though it was an older version. And I felt more comfortable and relaxed, and knew that I could do it, but at the same time slightly disappointed that I couldn’t control the new car. Was the symbol of that new car the new sort of direction, shall we say?

ELIAS: Yes, and the unfamiliarity of new movement. But it also is associated with timing and appreciation, for what you have offered to yourself in imagery in this dream is a recognition that there is some uncomfortableness associated with the unfamiliar, but there is also a desire to be incorporating that unfamiliar. But within timing, and in the recognition of the timing, you move back to the familiar, but the familiar is changed also. And there is a new appreciation of the familiar, for your perception is different. And, therefore, it is imagery of appreciating what you are generating now, and also knowing that in this time framework that is enough, and as you continue, the unfamiliar shall become more familiar and it shall not be as overwhelming.

In 2003, I moved to Santa Fe from Tucson. I was utterly miserable about the state of my life, and although my relocation had some aspects of moving into the unfamiliar, Santa Fe represented much that was familiar to me. I had one friend there. I think of the Southwest as my home, having grown up in Arizona. The food was familiar, the landscape was familiar, the Mexican/Spanish influence was familiar, the architecture was familiar. I was only 9 hours drive from where I used to live — too close, oddly enough. And, most familiar of all, I was feeling stuck in my familiar automatic responses of discounting myself, judging myself harshly, and generally putting a lot of sticks in my wheels. As a result, being in Santa Fe didn’t suit me at that time because it seemed too familiar. I wanted to be finished with the familiar, although I was fearful of the unfamiliar. So, there I was in Santa Fe, neither here nor there, living in Limbo.

After a year in Santa Fe, I chose to move away from the familiarity represented by the Southwest. I relocated to the truly unfamiliar, moving to an out-of-the-way, off the beaten track area out on the Olympic Peninsula in Western Washington (a place that actually passes laws to keep the familiar out of town), where I continued to struggle with familiar patterns that kept me mostly miserable and conflicted and confused for about another year and a half.

Eventually I became more comfortable with living in the unfamiliar ways Elias explains to us so patiently, to the point that now I feel fairly familiar with the formerly unfamiliar — both this geographic area and the psychic space. But living here (geographic location? psychic space?) doesn’t seem to be working for me, so I’m headed back to Santa Fe, the familiar, where I now expect I’ll experience what Elias talks to Anne about.

I do have a greater appreciation for the familiar now, or I wouldn’t want to move back to it. And I expect to see it with new eyes, because my perception has changed in so many ways. While being back in the familiar will provide a sense of comfort and stability and “control,” it will now also seem new, making it an unfamiliar familiar, transformed in my perception as a result of my experiences — my familiar and enlightening struggles — that came from trying to live in the unfamiliar.

So, I’m going to play with the Shift Diaries this weekend and see how I do now that I’m refocused on my original intent for this expression. I’m ready to have fun with it, which means I need to stay alert for those automatic responses that say, “Make this writing perfect or BAD THINGS WILL HAPPEN.” And I need to remember that this moment of clarity about my intention for doing the Shift Diaries is a choice I stay clear about in each moment, not something that now opens the way to have fun with this once and for all.

Anne K. told me she has an upcoming Elias session, and I noticed I felt mildly envious. But this led to noticing that I’ve chosen to make Elias sessions off limits (such amusements have not been in my budget for a couple of years now) “purposefully,” as Elias would say, since I prefer the “I did it all by myself” approach to almost everything I do.

When I do things myself, I get really clear about how things work, and that is my intent. The “do it yourself” approach to the Shift material, as much of a struggle as it’s been,  has led to genuine, experiential understanding of so many concepts that I was formerly sure I understood. Of course, I’ve had many moments when I would have preferred access to a more direct helping hand, so to speak, but I’ve even come to understand that this desired sense of being helped is also up to me to generate and allow. As usual, it seems to be a matter of trusting and assuming that I’m always being helped, and acknowledging and appreciating that, instead of getting fixated on some victimy sense that I’m struggling all alone. When I stop my mental shrieking, “Help me! Help me! Please, help me!” and simply turn my attention to, “I’m always being helped. I simply need to recognize that,” I immediately relax, and that is always helpful,

If I had an Elias session at this point, I’d probably be focused like a little kid on getting validation for how much I’ve accomplished in the “movement and widening” areas over the past three years, “Have I moved a whole lot, Elias? Huh? Huh? Have I? Am I much wider? Am I? Huh? Have I done good? Huh? Have I? Am I doing much better at noticing and recognizing and all that stuff? Huh?”

Of course, Elias reminds us how important it is that we validate and acknowledge ourselves, so I’ll do some “do it yourself” validating and pat myself on the head and say, “You are SO MUCH WIDER! You’re doing so much better!”

Speaking of doing things myself and not concerning myself with an audience, I just recognized another area where that theme is playing out in my life in imagery is associated with my cats.

My favorite cat, Skyler, the one that died in 2002, was a symbol of the death of me, as the self that I had known myself to be sickened and died during that time of trouble and trauma. (As I wrote that, I saw a spot of blue – perhaps a little validating communication from Elias.)

Skyler’s death represented the death of the me I was familiar with and my old familiar way of being – not that it was “bad,” but I counted on that way of being to make my way in the world, and my desire to move into new ways seemed to require leaving the old me behind.

Skyler represented the best aspects of me. I could tell who would like my natural exuberant energy by who liked Skyler. Tellingly, my mother did not like him, just as she’s not comfortable around me when I’m “full of myself.” I’m not singled out in this regard. My mother reflects traditional Calvinist beliefs toward anyone feeling self-assured — those old time religious beliefs that feeling good about yourself is prideful, and pride goeth before a fall.

Skyler was bold and out there, intense, warm, and open. When the doorbell rang, he went to the door expectantly, because he truly enjoyed new people and he just knew they were going to like him. Skyler felt great about himself and he had no doubt others would feel great about him, too. I lost that sense of myself, along with my sweet boy, during this transition. And, like everything else I loved that I stripped away during that time, Skyler’s death, along with the death of my own self-confidence, seemed necessary to motivate this intense exploration and inspire my difficult journey to a new way of being.

Kirby, one of the cats I got to “replace” Skyler, does not seem to be as obviously “special” as Skyler was, but he is marked with an unusual diamond on one shoulder. That led to his whole name being Kirby Norbu, which is a joke related to a woman I knew in Sonoma who named her dog, “Bijoux, that means jewel in French.” I swear she said it that exact way every time, so the dog’s name sounded like Bijoux-that-means-jewel-in-French. So, I named Kirby “Kirby Norbu-that-means-jewel-in-Tibetan,” partly as a joke only my friend Pam and I would appreciate, but partly to acknowledge that this diamond marks him as special.

While Skyler was out there and comfortable with an audience of strangers (like I am – like I was), Kirby is shy around strangers, which means his special charms and sweetness and cuteness are only revealed to me. Just as I’m the only audience for Kirby’s uniquely special qualities, I see that I now must be my own, and often only, audience, acknowledging and appreciating my special qualities, and recognizing and validating my own sense of accomplishment. This transition has turned me from looking outside myself for validation and acknowledgement, as I did for so long, to looking for it where it’s been hidden all this time, inside me.

In April 1997, experienced outdoorsman Warren Macdonald was exploring Hinchinbrook Island, an uninhabited paradise located off the coast of Australia, when he met Geert van Keulen, another solo hiker. Together they decided to climb the island’s rugged, challenging mountain, Mount Bowen. 

After five hours of hiking and with daylight dwindling, the two decided to set up their camp. Later that evening, Warren left the campsite in search for a place to use the bathroom. Suddenly, a granite boulder weighing 2,000 pounds broke loose and fell, pinning Warren’s legs. 

Hearing his hiking mate’s screams, Geert rushed to help. He tried for four hours to push and pry the boulder free, but it would not budge. It then started pouring down rain, filling the dry riverbed up to Warren’s hips. He knew before long the water could go over his head. “If I thought I was in trouble before, now I’m really in trouble,” says Warren. 

Video and story:
Warren Macdonald story 

Warren climbed Mt. Kilimanjaro a year after losing both his legs. On the Oprah show and in his book, he makes this Shifty statement about the traumatic adventure that got him to where he is now:

Warren says losing both of his legs has not been an entirely bad experience. In fact, he says he does not even necessarily wish that it had never happened. “I’ve learned … how infinitely more powerful each of us is, and how responsible we are for creating our reality,” he says. “It wasn’t in my reality—the same as it’s not in most people’s—for a guy with no legs to climb to the top of Kilimanjaro. So I set out to create that reality.”

This conflict makes writing for the blog (how I HATE that word) a chore, which is not what I intended. So, how to allow my natural energy to flow in a free and fun way without opposing it with expressed beliefs about the importance of looking good in public? How do I allow my natural energy to flow when an automatic response is galloping away with me?

As usual, it’s very easy to parrot the concept, “I simply need to accept that whatever I do is FINE!” Implementing that concept is not so easy.

*****

I’m still thinking about how I handle conflict. Here’s what came to me as I was in the shower:

When conflict arises, my aim now is to switch to focusing on the process instead of the outcome. It’s that Shifty difference Elias told us we’re headed toward.

Instead of getting into who’s right, who’s wrong, or what anyone thinks they want and how to make sure they get it or don’t, for me nowadays, dealing with conflict is like dealing with everything else in my life: it’s not about the details of the conflict, it’s about “what am I DOING?” that’s generating this energy of conflict.

I’m not saying I don’t trigger myself to all kinds of defensive automatic responses anymore. I still do. I’m defending myself before another human ever enters the scene, that’s how automatic that response is. But what’s different since I got into the “you create your own reality” groove is that I now want to back up and look at what’s REALLY going on, what am I doing to create the conflict and how can I reconfigure that energy to allow and accept what I want instead of oppose my reflected stuff.

Now, you said something about how you feel that accepting and allowing other points of view makes you feel that you have to bottle yourself up or go along with stuff you don’t like and don’t agree with. Abraham constantly hammers away at this misperception of accepting and allowing, since their workshops are called “The Art of Allowing,” and they always talk about ALLOWING as a cure for just about everything.

Allowing doesn’t mean I let people trample on me. It doesn’t mean I let people do whatever they’re going to do and suffer in silence. Nor does accepting mean I agree with them. Instead, what allowing and accepting are about is focusing on what I REALLY want and allowing my natural energy to flow. It’s about not putting out that energy of RESISTING what’s being reflected to me from outside, but instead recognizing that the RESISTANCE is the problem (and that I’m the one creating it), not the outside situation.

The resistance/opposition within me is what creates the outside situation of conflict, so allowing means I need to let go of projecting my attention to the outside/other person/situation (which means I need to stop defending myself – recognize I’m defending myself against something I oppose or don’t accept in MYSELF), and turn my attention toward “what do I want?” knowing that I can create what I want by focusing on TRUSTING myself to generate that. There’s nothing to oppose OUT THERE. There’s nothing OUT THERE to resist, convince, threaten, persuade, or anything.

Allowing and accepting means I recognize that I’ve generated the conflict IN ME. It means I accept my own opposing, conflicting beliefs and turn my attention to what I really want, which is always about relaxing and allowing my energy to flow freely in some form or another, instead of keeping it riveted in the direction of resisting what I don’t want.

And this can be VERY challenging, as we both know. You’ve given yourself some splendid examples of doing it, after first giving resistance and opposing a good run. Sometimes there’s nothing to do but wear yourself out opposing until you collapse from exhaustion and allow the door to allowing and accepting to open. I do that plenty myself.

Here’s what I notice right now, which may seem off the subject, but it’s not. I can quickly write an e-mail to you any subject. Yes, I do edit it a bit and reread it a couple of times to make sure I’m being clear, but it feels easy and fun. I’m not “writing for publication.” When I edit an e-mail for the Shift Diaries, it turns into a slog. I feel it has to be BETTER. More eloquent. Flow more smoothly. Not seem so off the cuff. That makes it harder, more chore-like, and NOT FUN.

Hmm….

How is this like handling conflict for me? It’s about the process, which when I write to you, I experience as an easy flow, like conversation. I’m not wrestling with my belief in the importance of perfection (much). When I do the Shift Diary entry, I don’t know who I’m talking to, so I get outcome oriented. I’m trying to make the entry bullet proof against the critical eye of all those Sumafi purists (that would be me) who might take issue with a turn of phrase that violates the purity of WHAT ELIAS SAYS is the correct definition of a word or concept.

How very annoying of me. See, it’s that “defending myself automatically” thing happening. I’m trying to write a “defensible” Shift Diary entry, where with you and I, if you misinterpret what I say, I get to say it again, more clearly. Or it goes by and no one really cares because you’re not that exacting. As I so often and tediously am.

I wonder how I’ll resolve this. I want the Shift Diaries to be FUN to create. I might begin to address it by putting this out there as today’s entry. Just as it is.

As soon as I type that, I feel I need to reread what I wrote and tighten it up more. Make it more ready for the spotlight. Jeez! Is the solution to simply throw these things out into the world, warts and all, and just GET OVER IT! or is there some middle ground between that and making this a chore.

I wonder how I’ll resolve the inner conflict I’m generating about having fun writing versus looking PERFECT in public.

*****

Funny, but right now, instead of feeling oppressed by this conflict, I’m kind of interested in how I might resolve this. Usually, I’d feel inclined to wrestle with the issue and FIGURE IT OUT, but at this moment, I notice a sort of amused curiosity about what I’ll show myself that will help me be clearer about this.

That’s a nice step in the preferred direction.

Now, something about the way the question was posed made it clear that I’d have to do without makeup. It was not as though it would be gone from my house, but I’d be able to head down to the store, bare-faced, and replace it. This seemed an odd thing to consider (as far as I was concerned, I required makeup to feel presentable), but I reflected a moment or two on that question, and decided,”I guess I’d be okay.”

More questions like the first came steadily. It was sort of as though someone asked me, and I was replying, but it was also sort of as though I asked these questions of myself. Except that these were not questions I would ever have thought to ask myself.

What if all my clothes were gone? Would I be okay? What if everything in the kitchen were gone?  Would I be okay? What if everything in the house were gone? Would I be okay? What if my car were gone? Would I be okay? What if I didn’t have a place to live? Would I be okay?

These questions went on until all the ways I identified myself and created comfort and security were gone. By the end of these questions, I saw myself out on the street with nothing more than a blanket to wrap around me. I appeared remarkably cheerful and…okay. How could that be okay? Would I really be okay even then? And, odd as it seemed to me, I really felt I would be okay.

Now, let me assure you that I wasn’t one of those flexible, easy going, take it or leave it, anything is okay with me, let’s go live off the land types. I didn’t like camping. I did not romanticize poverty. I had no aspirations to abandon my life to wander with nothing more than I could carry in a backpack. I saw no advantage of any kind in depriving myself of anything I wanted. I liked my stuff. My possessions were important to me. I liked the usual creature comforts. I was living pretty minimally, in my opinion, and that wasn’t really okay. I wanted more and better of everything I had. I had upwardly mobile dreams. I assumed my life would improve in all the expected material ways.

But here I was in my bed on what seemed to be a perfectly ordinary afternoon, contemplating a whole series of odd questions about what I could live without.

These questions and answers seemed somehow very light and they went by fairly quickly. There was a question, a moment of reflection, then my answer. I didn’t know what to make of this, yet neither was I particularly amazed by my responses. In real life, it didn’t seem that I’d find this okay at all, yet in this little question and answer session, I somehow saw that I would be okay without all the stuff I thought was important.
 
Although I’ve never forgotten that afternoon, I can’t say that it made the slightest difference in my views about what I needed to feel okay in life. In fact, I can’t see that it impacted me in any way at all. What was all that about, anyway?

Twenty-five years later, I began a hellish transition from the familiar way of life to living on what Elias talks about as the threshold of the unfamiliar. This transition was marked by one loss after another until all the ways I identified myself and created security for myself were gone. I’m left with more than a blanket. I’m not living on the streets. But over and over during the past few years I’ve asked myself that question from so long ago.

Will I be okay?
 
A friend I hadn’t heard from in a very long time phoned me yesterday. She and I were chatting about my bizarre life (I’m just putting it out there to everyone these days — exposure ‘r’ us). Hearing about my situation prompted my friend to offer the usual perspective about the unimportance of material things  — a concept so many of us think we believe. I certainly used to think I believed it. She said, “We all know what’s really important in life are things like our connection with our family and friends, and how we feel in our lives.”
 
And I replied, “We all say that we know what’s really important. We think that’s what we believe. But the way most of us live shows what we actually believe – our expressed belief. The belief that we EXPRESS is that what’s really important is having money and nice material stuff, living in a nice house in a nice area, how we dress, how we look, and whether we’re productive in ways that seem materially significant.”

I thought I knew what was really important to me, and I didn’t think it was money and status, my youthful good looks, and living a “shallow materialistic life.” But when I lost all that “shallow materialistic stuff,” I wasn’t waltzing around full of joy that I still had what REALLY matters in life. I didn’t REALLY believe that what I had left mattered. I wanted my comfortable life back. I wanted my stuff, my money, my position on the social ladder.
 
Much as I would like to think I believe that the best things in life are free, my experience has been that living off “what’s really important in life,” heart-warming as that may sound, can seem like mighty slim pickings when it’s just about all you’ve got left. Yes, my awareness has expanded remarkably, but that and $3 dollars won’t even buy you a gallon of gas in my neighborhood. Yet, what I’m coming to genuinely understand, instead of just mouth, is that what I have left is not “nothing.” It’s something very different than what I used to rely on, a comfort that’s often not all that comfortable, and a security that doesn’t seem especially secure. But I have a strange faith in this new, unfamiliar way. I want to believe in it, even if I still express a leaning in the old direction.

So, this brings us back around to that question I, or something, asked me thirty years ago.

If all the camouflage I relied on were gone, if the familiar were stripped away, if I had to find completely new ways of being in the world, would I be okay?
 
It’s taken me many years to come to the point where I can genuinely say what I so oddly recognized all those years ago, “Yes, I guess I’ll be okay.”

I’ve trained dogs and horses, and it was clear to me that the animal was never the source of the apparent problems. I could get on a problem horse and quickly have it behaving. The owner would get back on the horse and in minutes be struggling with the problem again. Working with problem horses was a lot easier than training their owners.

The Dog Whisperer reveals the same dynamic. Cesar works with dogs that seem completely insane, out of control, dangerously aggressive, and neurotic to the point of no return. Within a very short amount of time (a few minutes to a half hour), considering how entrenched the unwanted behavior seems, he’s got the dog behaving calmly. And this is done with almost no words, no commands, and no violence. In fact, Cesar is so skilled at directing the dog’s energy with his energy, that often it’s hard to see that he’s doing anything at all.

The owners are usually dumbfounded. How could it be? This dog was impossible! They’ve tried everything! Other trainers have failed to make a difference! Cesar is a miracle worker!

The next segment of the program involves Cesar training the owners—always a lengthier and slipperier proposition. For the dog owner, the unfamiliar good dog Promised Land beckons enticingly from the threshold of the familiar. However appealing that vision may be, though, most of the dog owners Cesar works with (like most of us working with Shifting) return repeatedly to familiar automatic responses as they struggle to develop new habits of noticing what they’re doing that isn’t working, addressing this in a relaxed but intentional manner, and choosing new beliefs and associated actions that get them desired results. For the dog owner, it usually takes lots of practice to become familiar with calmly reconfiguring energy in the face of automatic responses.

Cesar leads the dog owners away from familiar energy expressions by insisting they “master the walk.” The walk is not about taking the dog for a walk, although that’s where the practice takes place. It’s about establishing and maintaining a new energy expression. In perfect accordance with the Shift in consciousness, “mastering the walk” is about focusing on the  process, instead of the outcome. The desired outcome is the natural result of mastering the process.

Watching Cesar Millan at work is like watching a realized master of Shifting. He unerringly locates the issues in the household that are masquerading as dog behavior problems. He tells the owners that dogs are always ready to be in the present, which is how he is so easily able to shift their energy expressions. He actually said the words, “You create your reality,” to one couple.

I watch and re-watch the programs in this series and always come away feeling inspired, soothed, and uplifted. I don’t have a dog, nor do I want one, but I do want what Cesar Millan has—complete clarity about what it takes to calmly reconfigure energy.

• Changes to my website
• Writing and rewriting my contact page (what an opportunity for discounting and comparison!)
• Writing and rewriting the intro for the Shift Diaries (ditto)
• Editing and re-editing the e-mail that is the first entry
• Deciding to put the Shift Diaries in a blog instead of making it pages in my website (oh, yes, children, there are geeky differences
• Doing a lot of reading to get up to speed on blogs (I now hate the word ‘blog’ even more than I did before I decided to have one of my own.)
• Installing and configuring the blog
• Researching blog specific configuration issues that would only matter to a control freak geek (that would be me)
• Giving up, reluctantly, on that level of control due to losing some essential functionality (I think it’s essential–nothing is really clear at this point)
• Worrying that I haven’t put enough planning into the blog, since I have no experience in blogging that would provide a basis for any real planning
• Practicing wrangling the blog and posting to the blog
• Wondering how much more I need to know/configure before turning this loose on the world

I finally took a deep breath and published my altered website complete with links to the Shift Diaries blog. Whew!

Now, much as I feel driven to fill up the blog with entries RIGHT NOW, as though it were a newly completed model home that starts showing tomorrow, I’m also feeling a bit sick of everything blog-related at present. And as much as I also feel that I need to do more reading of WordPress (my blog software) documentation in order get past the innocent Babes in Blogland state I’m currently not enjoying, I’d really rather relax and read something lighter, like a new library book I requested, I am not myself these days, a memoir of a drag queen/advertising genius who lives with with a male prostitute. That sounds like such a refreshing lifestyle compared to mine.

Back in my obsessive days of coding, I would simply keep my butt in this chair and keep going. I’d flop into bed about midnight, get up at six, and get back to it. Time’s a-wastin’! The technology is changing as you sleep! Gotta keep moving or you’ll fall way, way, way behind.

But now, all I want to do is relax. Well, it’s not ALL I want to do, but I’m ready to relax some after a couple weeks of confronting my fears about putting myself out here for all the world to see.

Anne K. and I exchanged a few e-mails today about how we compare ourselves constantly, and in the world of computer professionals (as we geeks are referred to by those who hire us), comparison is rampant. Now, I’m no longer officially a member of that world, but I was for almost a decade. And I notice that I feel pangs of discomfort about not being up to my former level of completely geeked-out 24/7 geekiness.

I worry that some geek will look at my website that I designed and developed all by myself, and, instead of admiring my beautiful all-css/no tables layout (geek-speak for something kind of cool that is totally invisible to the average viewer of a web page), the visiting geek will sneer at the fact that I use FrontPage.

I worry that by using WordPress’s standard “theme” (the way the blog looks), I’m demonstrating a lack of geekish machismo.

I worry, in short, that I will be seen as lacking in geekish imagination and knowledge, that I’ll appear uninformed, ill-advised, misguided, and just plain ignorant. Or, as we geeks say about each other, “I don’t think she knows what she’s doing.”

Since everything about this blog is Shift related (did I mention that I’ll be instigating a convention of capitalizing Shift when I’m talking about “the Shift” as opposed to when I mean “moving things to different positions”), and comparison is a major snare for so many of us, I thought it would be a good idea to simply put it out there that I’m comparing myself to real geeks and discounting myself for not being the geek I used to be.

I don’t even WANT to be the geek I used to be, but that doesn’t keep me from discounting myself for lowering the bar. If I would try harder, work harder, do a little more research, experiment some more, get in there and hack that code until things were just so, I’d be back in the ranks. The ranks I left because I came to find that world pointless and exhausting, plus I didn’t have a life while I was in it.

This is an example of the conflict we create for ourselves that Elias talks about: we make a choice and then beat ourselves up because of our choice. I chose to leave behind my life as a girl geek, but I don’t leave behind the standards and judgments and comparing and discounting that went with it.

There’s nothing to say about my current lack of bleeding edginess to the geeks “out there,” since we all know I’m only talking to myself. To myself I say, “I’m doing other things now. I’m still able to get in the loop the same way I always did, by doing research and experimening. I don’t have to compete in the geek arena. The absence of cool hacks to this or any other code I’m using does not need to imply that I’m lacking intelligence or drive.”

Which reminds me that during my geek phase, I actually heard some people (very few, actually) discussing with pride their decision to cut back to working only 14 hours a day. If you didn’t work essentially ALL THE TIME (literally!), you were branded someone who didn’t take things seriously. That’s where I am now. I don’t take geekish things seriously.

But I’m taking other things seriously — ephemeral, invisible things like trying to get familiar einough with living the SHIFTY way of life so that I have a whole new set of automatic responses. Learning to deliberately direct my life according to how my PROCESS feels instead of being driven by outcomes. Learning to relax and trust myself.

It sounds pretty ridiculous when I say that. It’s still not an explanation that can be offered in social situations in response to that ever challenging question, “So, what have you been up to lately?”

“Oh, I’ve been practicing self acceptance diligently and trying to genuinely appreciate and acknowledge myself.”

No, not that…let’s see…

“I’ve been identifying my core truths and all the influences and associations connected with them. It’s been really enlightening!”

Hmm…I don’t think that’ll go down any better. Well, how about…

“I’ve been noticing all the ways I oppose and practicing reconfiguring my energy by using appreciation. It feels like I’m making some headway!”

Oh, that’ll make me sound completely bonkers!

All right, it seems I ought to stick with my usual evasive reply, “Oh, not much. Lots of weeding and mowing! Ha ha, those pesky weeks are everywhere! Spring has sprung it seems!”

Is this dodging the exposure bullet or is this simply common sense? Is there a way to talk about this stuff and what I’m focused on to people who don’t read Elias, listen to Abraham, or adore Seth? But it really seems to me that my choices over the past three or so years would make more sense to others if I had decided to try living off the land in the Alaskan wilderness, or gone off to India and moved into an ashram, or decided to prepare for some insanely extreme trek across Tibet, or done just about any bizarre thing that has somewhat recognizable parameters.

Oh, wait a minute…my choices haven’t made sense to me either. I can’t even explain myself to me. And there’s no denying that my choices would have made more sense to me if I’d done any of the usual strange things associated with journeys of self discovery.

So, what have I been up to lately?

“Oh, nothing particularly visible. Just trying to change my whole approach to life. And you? What have you been up to?”