Hi There:

Please click this link first.  I’ll wait.

Welcome back.  I thought maybe it was time I shared some of the things I’ve been writing about recently rather than only my writings from the past, so here goes…

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December 16, 2009
Hello, Michael:

Well, it’s been a long time since I’ve done any writing at all, and longer since I’ve done any serious writing.  I’ve been posting my ‘Future Me’ stuff to our blog, but I’ve wanted to write more of what’s going on with me now.  So, I’m sitting here at Francelli’s having a tea and a muffin and I’ve got my list of notes here in front of me.

The first thing I want to write about though is something that came to me last night.  It goes back several years, but I’ve been only peripherally aware of it until now.

Back when I was living at S’s and I found those copies of ‘The God of Jane’ and ‘The Individual and the Nature of Mass Events on her bookshelf (and got back into reading Seth again), my first thought about money was that I couldn’t ask for it for myself, only if I was going to use it to serve others.  From the beginning, though, I had two streams of thought, two desires as it were.  That’s changed a lot since then; in the beginning I was so separated within myself that I separated all of the aspects of myself as well.  Anyway, from the beginning I wanted two things.  On one hand I wanted spiritual development, and on the other hand I wanted wealth, freedom, and what I saw as coming with wealth. So, my thought back then was to say to my Self, “You provide the money for me, and I’ll take it from there.”  Basically I was willing to allow my inner self to come up with the money for me, but I was so conflicted, so afraid of being controlled by what I was as my ‘greater self’ that I didn’t want to be manipulated or forced into using this new found wealth for purposes other than what ‘I’ wanted. As I say, back then I was so separated I separated everything, but I’m reminded again and again that ideas and beliefs we set in place often migrate to the background of our consciousness where they remain active even though we’re unaware of them.  Something that came to me this morning was a belief from when I was about 10 or so.  I was told that sometimes ‘God’ grants your request, but sometimes ‘God’ would simply make you understand why your request can’t be granted.  When you REALLY want something, an explanation is small consolation.  We’re told, ‘That’s life’, or ‘suck it up’, or ‘you just have to accept it’.  But do we?  Hmmm…

Where all of this is leading is that in our ‘Now’ Marcia and I are living a magical existence.  Neither one of us are working in the traditional sense at the moment, but our days are filled with joy and magic and spontaneous expressions of both.  Marcia won at contest at CARE that included two free movie tickets, and (unknowingly), I won a contest sponsored by CHEK News and Tourism Victoria – one of the daily prizes that amounts to about $200 worth of gifts including a horse-drawn trolley tour, a night’s stay at the Villa Marco Polo Inn B&B and an annual family pass to the Royal BC Museum.  Wonderful gifts.  As I said to Marcia, if I’d known it was a contest I wouldn’t have entered.  I thought it was just an opportunity to share my favourite Christmas story.

Having said that, let’s say we win $20M or so in the lottery.  Well… what came to me last night is that while I’ve been asking my Self/  All That Is for the opportunity to have this money, the opportunities to live my life as I wish, there’s been a latent fear that when this happens, that I’m going to be cut loose so to speak, that in having the money to buy what I want, I’ll no longer need to rely on the Universe to provide spontaneous, magical events for me and I’ll essentially be out on my own.  I’ve seen it as a by-product of ‘growing up, that with independence comes separation, and as someone who’s worked his way past a lot of separation and into a greater integration of my Self, I haven’t wanted to give that up.  Hence the conflict…  I’ve wanted to receive the money, to live a life of health and wealth and happiness, but I’ve felt that having that would take me farther away from myself in other ways.

There’s a Seth quote for that, of course:

“Many people ask, for example: ‘What is the purpose of my life?’ Meaning: ‘What am I meant to do?’ but the purpose of your life, and each life, is in its being. That being may include certain actions, but the acts themselves are only important in that they spring out of the essence of your life, which simply by being is bound to fulfill its purposes.” ~ Dreams, ”Evolution,” and Value Fulfillment, Vol. 1, session 899.

So today I can look at the opposite side of that, that receiving the money, whether from the lottery or from other source is a part of, not separate from, the spontaneous magic and joy we’ve been living, that these things come out of our choice to live in joy.  Therefore having this money and living my life as I imagine it to be doesn’t take me away from my Self; if anything, it brings me closer to who I am.  The way I live my life, the way I create my life is an expression of who I am, who I see myself Being in this moment.  I also remembered another belief recently, something that I’ve often shared with others, and that is that ‘negativity’, our limiting beliefs don’t ‘cling’ to us, instead they’re invariably things we hold onto.  Sometimes we hold on gently, but usually we grab on to them with clenched fist.  To release them from our lives, all we have to do is ‘let go’.

I received the following ‘Future Me’ post this morning, and that was followed by today’s Tut quote.  First the ‘Future Me’:

December 15, 2008
Hello, Michael:

Well, I’m feeling rather aggressive this morning.  Woke up this morning feeling that there’s really no reason for ‘me’ being here.  What I mean by that is that from my perspective my conscious mind/ ego is responsible for providing information to my inner self on the conditions of my reality and to provide instruction to my self as to what experiences to create in my life.  Well, I’ve been doing that for more than a decade.  I’ve been VERY clear in terms of what I expect to see, what my dreams and desires are, and how I want my life to unfold, but none of that has happened.  I’m living in a world I don’t want to be, existing in a way I don’t want to live, with a body that’s not as healthy as it could be.  In short, my life is not that of a creator.  Now I’ve invested a lot of time over the years learning how to create my life, coming to understand who and what I am, and learning to be a conscious co-creator, but it’s all come to naught.  I’m in physical reality, so I’m told, to experience from a physical reality perspective.  Fine.  I accept that.  But since I know that I’m responsible for creating my reality, and since I know that I AM Source energy and I have the power to mould my life into what I want it to be – in fact that’s my purpose – then continuing to live as I am is a waste of my time.  If the rest of my Self isn’t going to listen to me, if my ideas and dreams and desires fall on hard ground, if my life is going to be what it is despite my intentions and desires, then I’m wasting my time here.  Now I’m not anxious to end this life, but as it is my life requires no conscious input.  My mind doesn’t need to be here.

I’m tired of feeling that I am less than the rest of my Self.  I’m tired of feeling that the only way I can experience my life is to force it into being.  I’m tired of feeling separated from the rest of my Self.  I’m tired of feeling that what ‘I’ want doesn’t count.  I’m tired of feeling that I’m not worth listening to or providing for.  I’m tired of having a body that has access to infinite amounts of energy and yet persists in having bad eyes and bad teeth.  I’m tired of being ineffectual in my own life.  I feel like I want to explode.  There’s so much anger and so much resentment and so much energy built up inside me that I’m ready to let it lash out and I don’t care what the consequences will be – like an earthquake or a forest fire.  I’m ready to rip my life to shreds, and more’s the pity for any part of my Self that gets in my way.  That’s what I’m feeling right now.

Am I allowing?  Yes.  Am I open?  Yes.  Have I sent off rockets of desire?  Yes.  Have I made it absolutely perfectly clear what I want to experience in my life?  Yes.  Have I received ANY SLIGHT INDICATION THAT THIS IS EVER GOING TO HAPPEN? No.  And so what’s the point in continuing?  What’s the point in keeping on, keeping going?  What’s the point in asking for things that aren’t provided?  What’s the point in being infinite if I can’t express my infinity?  What’s the point in being AWAKE and AWARE while being confined into a ‘body’ that can’t move?  I’m right pissed off right now, and I’m not feeling like my consciousness is to blame here.  I’m past that.  I’m past feeling like I deserve this, or that this is all I can expect.  I’m worth more than this, and the rest of my Self had bloody well listen up.

Well, that was this morning, and I’m not going to apologize, even to myself for writing it, because that’s what I felt at the time.  Been working with this question all day long, and looking for answers.  Well, tonight I followed an impulse to go to my Mnotes 4 file, and did my usual search for the right spot.  I came out at an interesting place, between a Seth quote and a CC quote, but both of them are relevant.

Here they are:

“Good evening.  Now: I have spoken about counterparts in Ruburt’s class.  Many of the students became deadly serious as they tried to understand the concept.

Some wanted me to identify their counterparts for them.  One student (Fred) a contractor, said little.  Instead, during the last week he let his own creative imagination go wherever it might while he held the general idea in his mind.  He played with the concept, then.  In a way his experiences were like those of a child – open, curious, filled with enthusiasm.  As a result he himself discovered a few of his counterparts.

Most people, however, are so utterly serious that they suspect their own creativity.  They expect that its products will be unreal or not valid in the physical world.  Yet there is a great correlation between what you think of as creativity, altered states of consciousness, play, and “spiritual” development.

When you create a poem or a song or a painting you are in a state of play, of enjoyment, of freedom.  You intend to make something different, to produce a new version of reality.  You create out of love, for the sake of the experience.  At one time or another almost everyone has that kind of experience, but children have it often.  They compose songs and music and paintings in their heads.  They alter the focus of their consciousnesses frequently.  They do not stop to ask whether or not the play is real or pertinent.  Physically, play develops their body mechanisms.  It also flexes the great capabilities of their minds.

When you think: “Life is earnest,” and decide to put away childish things, then often you lose sight of your own creativity and become so deadly serious that you cannot play, even mentally.  Spiritual development becomes a goal that must be attained.  The goal is to be achieved through hard work, and as long as you believe this you do not understand what the spirit is.

I keep returning to natural analogies – but plants do not work at developing their potential.  They are not beautiful because they believe it is their responsibility to please your eye.  They are beautiful because they love themselves and beauty.  When you are so serious, you almost always distort the nature of your own spirit as far as your own understanding of it is concerned.  You cannot let your guard down long enough to discover what it is.  You keep looking for new rules or regulations, or methods of discipline.

Give us a moment . . . You keep searching for a new “ascended master”, or guru, to keep you in line and point out THE WAY – in capitals.

In their own ways children are quite aware of their counterparts and of other portions of their individual realities.  They relate to their counterparts in dreams.  They sometimes see them as “invisible” companions.  You dream of your own counterparts frequently, but you are so afraid of maintaining what you think of as the rational adult self that you ignore such communications.

People have written here asking about soul mates.  In certain circles this is the latest vogue.  The idea is an old one: it is based upon the reality of counterparts, and presents another version of the theory.  But, again, it is treated with an almost pompous seriousness.  Many of those who use the term do it to hide rather than release their own joyful abilities.  They spend time searching for their soul mates – but the search involves them in a pilgrimage for a kind of impossible communication with another, in which all division is lost with the two of them trying to join in a cementing oneness, suffocating all sense of play or creativity.  You are not one part, or one half, of another soul, searching through the annals of time for your partner, undone until you are completed by your soul mate.

When you become too intent to maintain your reality you lose it, for you deny the creativity upon which it rests.

Many of you have daydreams in which you actually see yourselves as your counterparts, and portions of their lives sometimes come through to you as you go about your chores.

You pay little heed, however.  You think this is just your “imagination.”  The unknown reality is alive in your own psyche.  There are hints of it in all of your experience.  You would not be alive, in your terms, if first you did not imagine yourself as you are.  Play is, in fact, one of the most practical methods of survival, both individually and for the species.  Within its framework lie the secrets of creativity, and within the secrets of creativity lie the secrets of being”. – The “Unknown” Reality, Vol. II, Session 732.

and

“Every restriction you feel and experience in the physical is a restriction you have placed psychologically upon the self. We do not think it can be more clearly stated than this. And each person chooses the vehicles, the methods, the ways in which they will interact with the world. That is, how they will achieve the results they are seeking. What forms are acceptable or not acceptable. The mechanics of how their own personal reality functions.”

“Becoming conscious simply means becoming aware of your thoughts and choosing the thoughts you will entertain. Another way to look at this is the same way you look at drawing a picture. You choose the materials you will use, the colors, different materials, the markers, pencils etc. Sometimes the drawing appears. You draw the lines and wait to see what you get. Making choices as you go. Sometimes you choose a subject first and attempt a rendering of that subject. Either way you are drawing. One is more full of surprises than the other. One is more predictable. The predictable work may seem to be more difficult to accomplish, precisely because you have preconceived ideas about the nature of its being. Ideally, you can choose the subject intuitively and then allow the drawing to emerge by following impulses that flow naturally one to the other. In this way you remove the rational mind from the process as director. It becomes the observer. It’s quite an easeful and simple process, and yet achieving it can sometimes seem difficult. It’s not the individual lines that make up the picture but the over all effect of all the lines.”

And in these I’ve found my answer.  It’s simple, really, but complex at the same time.  The answer is joy.  Every moment I invest in joy, I am open and allowing.  And every moment I’m not in joy, I’m closed off.  My answer to providing what I desire is not in serious study.  It’s not in learning about the intricacies of the universe.  It’s not in applying myself judiciously to my task.  It’s about living in joy.  By living in joy I bring to myself more things that are joyful.  By being serious, I bring a life of seriousness.  The rest is details.  In Shore Slocum’s interview he asked, “What do you love so much you’d do it for free?”  And the answer for me is that the things I love so much I’d do for free, I couldn’t see a way of making money from.  I love to make photographs, just as my way of connecting with the earth.  I love cycling, and walking in the woods.  I love to read.  I love to cook.   I love to be around Marcia.  I love to shop for things I want.  I love to buy things.  I love to travel.  I love fast cars and fancy hotels.  I love good food.  I love sunrises and sunsets and children’s laughter.  I love to play.  There are a whole lot of things I love, but none of them fit the mould of life in this society, where one has to work to make money to pay bills…  And so in doing the things I love I’ve also felt guilty because it meant someone else was providing for me.   And so I’ve felt like I shouldn’t be doing the things I want to do, that I should be buckling down and looking for work instead.  And I’ve parceled out my happiness a little bit at a time when what I’ve wanted is to be able to live in this society without working, so that both Marcia and I can do the things we love.  That’s joy to me.  That’s perfection as I see it.  And imagining those things brings me joy, but I’ve lost the sense of joy when it comes to translating those imagined ideas into physical reality.  I love the idea of giving money to others, of creating a business where others are valued and happy, of working with the latest green building techniques.  I love the idea of taking photography courses, and working with my new cameras.  This brings me great joy!  I love spending long, lazy mornings in bed with Marcia.  I love having a house to work on – not too much, just little things here and there.  I love teaching other people what I’ve learned, and learning from them.  But what I need to surrender here is the idea that I can’t live the life I want to live in this reality because it doesn’t fit with what everyone else is doing.  Find joy in every moment.  That’s my instruction to myself.  I like it!  Find joy in doing what I’m doing, and stop worrying about how it’s going to happen.  This connects to what I was reading yesterday in the CC writings.  Hang on a second…

“Recognizing What Is Yours, Integrity and Compromise, Necessity of Experiential Understanding

What you are seeing now is the clarity of your understanding of the situation of what it is to be in physical expression. Moving past the self-imposed dramas of acting in any way against what is yours or against what is you brings this clarity into focus. So that what is yours feels joyous and harmonious and that which is not feels more or less like death. Choices have become very clear and simple.

You should understand at this time that any doubt or sense of confusion within the self is only an illusion you have created on top of a truth that is plainly visible to you. That is to say, should you find yourselves questioning yourselves you are simply toying with yourselves. We do not recommend this. So stop toying. For truly you have had enough of toying. Honestly and truly. Your deep sense at this time of what is possible and your clear understanding of your power and position in this regard is your greatest strength. Do not capitulate this strength to any outside force, belief, idea, or persons. Recognize that your opportunities to express these ideas to others can be used as a tool to clarify and strengthen your position, and use it this way. For now you truly are in a place where you CAN use all experience, thought, and evidence to your advantage. You CAN believe, you can KNOW that all is working together for your good. To the extent that you acknowledge this – walk within this experience and know this truth in your being. It will, out of necessity, be experienced.”

There’s more, but that one sentence – ‘…what is yours feels joyous and harmonious and that which is not feels more or less like death.’  That’s what I’m talking about.

Live in joy, and never, ever let anyone tell me otherwise.

Lesson for the day.

Love,
Me.

“You must understand that your present is the point at which flesh and matter meet with the spirit. Therefore the present is your point of power in your current lifetime, as you think of it. If you assign greater force to the past, then you will feel ineffective and deny yourself your own energy.” ~ The Nature of Personal Reality, session 656.

And then today’s Tut quote was:

Just wanted to remind you that sometimes success is better measured in smiles received, giggles heard, and hands held, than in dollars earned, deadlines met, and kilos shed.

And I must say, you’ve done well for yourself.
Yeah us!

By the way, you’re on my vision board this very moment, with your new fulfilled desire!… giggling.

Our last ‘He Says, She Says’ blog post was about the stories we tell ourselves, and one thing I wrote in there was a belief that also surfaced fairly recently.  In simple terms, it was that ‘the body never forgets what we do to it’.  Here’s what I wrote:

“Actually, I had an interesting belief surface yesterday.  Marcia had a sore shoulder (too much computer work perhaps), and as I was massaging the area the thought popped into my head, “The body never forgets what we do to it.”  As someone who’s accumulated his share of scars (both physical and non-) over the years, this is a belief I developed years and years ago.  Sometimes when I’m tired or sore and my scars start to ache, I’d remind myself that the body never forgets.  What I was really telling myself was that my body would never forgive, not really, and it was in those ‘weaker’ moments when it would choose to remind me.  It was a belief, my belief, and I just never questioned it.  Not until now, anyway.  But what if there’s a different story I can tell myself instead?  What if my body only exists ‘Now’, free of the past inasmuch as I’m willing to allow myself to be?  What if there is really nothing to forget, nothing to forgive?  My body has a tremendous ability to heal itself.  Now that’s a very different story.”

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December 18, 2009
Hello, Michael:

First of all, Happy 181^st Monthaversary to us!  Wow…

So… I had a couple of really interesting thoughts come to me the other night, both tied in to what I wrote the other day.  The first was to see myself living at SP, but living there in full harmony, the way I am now, and more.  Basically it was a reminder of what I wrote, that receiving the money, being wealthy, etc. are extensions, expressions of my joy, of being who I am.  I don’t have to surrender who I am in order to receive the things I desire; in fact it’s quite the opposite.  I believe that my idea that I would have to surrender myself in order to move to SP for example has been hindering me from getting there.  That’s not to say that I’ve been stopped or prevented from receiving these things, only that I haven’t been willing to give up one in order to have the other.  And now I realize I don’t have to.  I must admit I really like the idea of living this way as an expansion of who I am, and seeing things coming to me as a by-product of being myself.

The other thought that came to me the other day was something I woke up with in the middle of the night.  I was going to get up and write it down, but decided against it and simply set myself to remember it in the morning.  The message I got was simply, “Seek joy, not knowledge.”  That’s very profound for me, in several different ways.  For one, back to when I first learned the idea of ‘you form your own reality’, I figured there must be a process to it.  Since I was at the time separated from my very Being, I consequently decided that in learning this process I could master it and therefore use it as I wished to do.  That’s been a very long road for me, and it has other threads as well.  For one, as I’ve written before, I prized my intellect over everything else, at least partially because that’s where I was given the most credit.  But it was also partially because of my interest in the scientific process, partially because of my intense desire to master my own fate, and for several other reasons.  What I couldn’t see in the beginning was that the process as I saw it was far too linear, and my understanding of ‘knowledge’ far too specific.  As Seth said:

“The conscious mind sees with a spectacular but limited scope. It lacks all peripheral vision. I use the term ‘conscious mind’ as you define it, for you allow it to accept as evidence only those physical data available for the five senses—while the five senses, of course, represent only a relatively flat view of reality, that deals with the most apparent surface.

“The physical senses are the extensions of the inner senses that are, in one way or another, a part of each physical species regardless of its degree. The inner senses provide all species with an inner method of communication. The cells then, possess inner senses.

“Atoms perceive their own positions, their velocities, motions, the nature of their surroundings, the material that they compose. [Your] world did not just come together, mindless atoms forming here and there, elements coalescing from brainless gases—nor was the world, again, created by some distant objectified God who created it part by part as in some cosmic assembly line. With defects built in, mind you, and better models coming every geological season.

“The universe is formed out of what God is.” ~ Dreams, “Evolution,” and Value Fulfillment, Vol. 1, session 886.

Also:

“The inner self has a vast and infinite reservoir from which to draw knowledge and experience. All kinds of choices are available, and the diversity of physical matter is a reflection of this deep source and variety.” ~ The Seth Material, Session 509.

It’s mostly the first sentence, “The conscious mind sees with a spectacular but limited scope.” that I was referring to, although the rest of it certainly fits as well.  As Seth said in the first quote above, we tend to limit ourselves in terms of what information, what knowledge we’ll allow our conscious minds to accept.  I’ve been involved with expanding the capabilities of my conscious mind for a very long time, but in using the old ideas, the old tools, I’ve limited how much I’ve been capable of expanding.  To me, knowledge has been an accumulation of facts, built up, sorted through, and discarded as new information became available.  This ‘Seek joy, not knowledge’ has given me some new perspectives to consider.  Seth talks about ‘unconscious knowing’ and in the CC writings they talk about a ‘new knowing’, both of which suggest that there’s a different level of experience, a different aspect of knowledge that I’ve so far missed pretty completely.  This promises to be exciting.  By ‘Seek joy, not knowledge’, I’ve suggested to myself that there’s a different Way of experiencing that goes beyond the bounds of what I’ve previously set for myself.

Another way of looking at this is that the suggestion itself is like a Zen koan.  ‘Seek joy, not knowledge’ is like a snake eating its own tail because joy isn’t something one can really seek.  My old friend Paul Cormack once wrote, “The happiness you seek is one you’ll never find, because usually the happiness you seek is one you didn’t know you left behind.”  Joy isn’t something one can seek, it’s something one finds within.  Joy is a choice.  No matter the circumstances of my life, how well or how poorly my life is going at the moment, in every moment I have the choice to decide how I’m going to feel.  This can be in relation to or irrespective of the circumstances of my life.  To seek joy is simply to make a choice to experience it, to make it a central focus around which to pattern the other aspects of my life.  From the time I was a boy my life had the search for greater and greater knowledge as a central focus; switching this focus to living in joy is a very different Way of Being.  Joy is the process – seeing myself living in joy is more powerful than believing that I’ll be safe if I have a load of money in the bank sort of thing…  The first involves trust, and the second negates it.

Love,
Me.

“Using the inner senses, we become conscious creators, cocreators.” ~ Seth Speaks, session 515.

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December 21, 2009
Hello, Michael:

Well, today I did something I haven’t done in a long time.  I left my computer at home and went down to the local coffee shop with only my notebook.  It’s funny to think about because I got the laptop specifically so that I wouldn’t have to write things out longhand and then type them into the computer.  Still, the experience felt different somehow.  Anyway, here’s what I wrote:

Well, it’s the first day of ‘winter’ here in Victoria, which means it’s 6^o C and new shoots are coming up.  Okay, I have a couple of related thoughts to add in here.  A few days ago I received a thought that said, “Seek joy, not knowledge.”  I’ve already written some about this, but the thought that came to mind goes back to when I first read about Seth’s concept of, ‘you form your own reality’.  From the beginning I decided that there must be a process to this creation of reality, and all I needed to do was to learn how to do it and then practice it until I mastered it.  That was what I set out to do, with varying degrees of success, but I could never come up with a concrete ‘step by step’ guide.  Still, I kept trying.  I’ve written before about how I learned to prize my intellect and to hone it, and that was also a part of it.  The idea of “Seek joy, not knowledge” came at the perfect time, however.  No surprise there…  I’ve been writing lately about knowledge, and about different ways of perceiving knowledge that go beyond the strict scientific linear idea of knowledge and an increasing accumulation of ‘facts’.  There’s intuitive knowledge for example.  Seth talks about unconscious knowledge, and in the CC writings they talk about a ‘new knowing’.  All of these hint at a new way of learning or experiencing that goes beyond the linear idea I’ve had of ‘knowledge’.  I find it rather intriguing, actually.  Another thought that came to me regarding this is along the lines as seeing joy as the foundation of reality creation.  I’m not talking about joy as a linear path to creation the way I once would have; rather what I’m thinking is, “What if being in a state of joy is the nursery that allows desires to grow into manifestation?”  Seth talks about spontaneity knowing its own order, and that reality creation is achieved using a basic unpredictability:

“… magic is everywhere in the operation of your body, and in the operation of the world.

“My definition of magic is this: Magic is nature unimpeded, or magic is life unimpeded. It is true that your thoughts and emotions and beliefs form the reality that you experience – but it is also true that this creative construction is, in a manner of speaking, magically formed. That is, the construction of your body and the construction of a world are produced with the greatest combination of order and spontaneity – an order and spontaneity that seems hidden rather than apparent.” ~ The Way Toward Health, March 10, 1984.

Actually, writing that got me thinking of reality creation as an organic process.  With a tree for example, one plants the seed and provides care and watering, but the plant grows itself.  It sprouts new leaves, flowers, etc. on a schedule that makes some intrinsic sense.  Creating a loving environment can certainly help, but one can’t ‘force’ the tree to grow.  I’ve always seen reality creation as a mechanistic process, whereby one uses skill, pattern, method – a clockworks or sorts.  Now I sound like René Descartes.  Hmmm…

That’s certainly given me something to think about.  Coupled to that is another thought that came to me yesterday.  Similar to ‘Seek joy, not knowledge’, the thought was that rather than seeking health, wealth, wisdom, synchronicity or whatever, I should seek only to be the fullest expression of myself, and to make those other qualities or aspects a part of that.  The reason behind this is that we each have our own beliefs and ideas about what it means to have perfect health, or to be wise, or to be wealthy, or to be _____ or to have _____.  And by seeing those ideas as fixed goals or endpoints that we seek to achieve, we do two things.  One, we see that who we are right now isn’t the person who is _____ or has _____ and we begin to judge ourselves based on our current position.  I’ve done so many times.  The next step we take is that we begin to alter who we are to become the person we believe we have to be in order to be _____ or have _____.  Let’s take money for example; it’s an easy one to work with.  There are several movies out that profile someone suddenly experiencing wealth or success, and many cases the person involved transforms him or herself into someone else.  “Mr. Deeds Goes to Town” and “Ziegfeld Girl” are both good examples.  I believe there are two possibilities for this.  One possibility is that this is the true self of the person involved, and suddenly achieving the means to achieve their aims releases the person they’ve kept repressed.  The other possibility as I see it is that the person involved holds beliefs and ideas about how a wealthy or successful person is supposed to be or act, and having sudden success or wealth alters him or her to fit that assumed role.  I offer these ideas without judgment, and in both cases the person may be involved in ways that can be perceived as ‘good’ or ‘bad’.  Using the first idea, releasing the person within, an angry person would become more angry and a jealous person would find more reasons to be jealous, but a joyful person would become more joyful and a generous person more generous.  Who they perceive themselves to be, at least in part, would be magnified.  As to the second scenario, Bob Proctor once said, “Most people live their lives the way they think other people think they should live.”

To me, though, the most important aspect of this way of being (seeking to be _____ or to have _____) is that it objectifies the ideal and moulds the self this way and that in order to fit in with those objectified ideas.  An analogy would be to go to school and to sign up for courses, whereby the student has to go from room to room, adapting his or her life to fit a fixed schedule.  I’ve lived a good portion of my life that way, and I’m not just talking about school.  I’ve become very adept at being a chameleon, adapting myself to every new situation, every new circumstance.  When one considers that we are each responsible for forming the reality that we experience – individually and en masse – then I am continually adapting to a world that I’m forming in the first place.  Because of the nature of LOA, the ‘Universe’ simply keeps turning the merry go round that I’ve decided I should be on.  I’ve become a dog chasing my own tail.  It’s rather like beating your head against the wall; it feels so good when you stop.

The alternative then is to seek to be the fullest expression of myself.  Here the Self that I am is held in the center of things, and rather than shifting and adapting myself to meet new conditions, my world adapts to meet the vibration that I’m offering.  I don’t have to give up the idea of having _____ or being _____, but the focus shifts and becomes one of ‘Who am I with _____?’ or ‘How do I feel as _____?’  Expression of the Self, of ‘Me’ is the central ‘goal’ here.  That doesn’t mean the Self is fixed or immutable.  Quite the contrary, but the difference is that growth and change are primarily internal and then expressed out into the world.  As simple question to one’s self is, “Do I want to be _____ or to have _____ because that is how I see the best expression of myself or is there some other reason?”  With this discovery comes choice.

One final note for now… something else that came to me recently.  In my search for knowledge over the years I’ve always been very inclusive of what I’ve come across because I didn’t want to miss out on an opportunity.  Even when I didn’t think something would apply to me, I was afraid to pass it by, ‘just in case’.  As time goes on I’ve become more selective in what I’ve been willing to accept, and the thought that came to me is that there’s a difference between being ‘defining’ and ‘confining’.

Okay, it’s later, and I have one more thought to include here before the day is out.  There are a lot of things going on in my life at the moment, and on the surface at least there appears to be little I can do to rein them in to any modicum of order.  Now in my old way of thinking my conversation with myself would go something along the lines of, “There are a lot of things going on in my life and there appears to be nothing I can do about them!  I’m willing to put in the effort, but I need my inner self to provide the opportunities for me, and I seem to be letting myself down once again.  What am I going to do?”  It’s a question I’ve asked myself this question more than once over the years.  However, in learning to adapt a new perspective, my conversation with myself goes more like this: “There are a lot of things going on in my life right now, and there doesn’t seem to be anything I can do about them.  However, as Bashar would ask, of the things I ‘can’ do, which one of them brings the highest level of excitement?  I’ve made my directions and desires plain to my inner Being, and I know that all of this is being worked out perfectly in Framework 2.  That there appears to be nothing for me to ‘do’ means simply that it’s not yet time for me to take action on them.  However, I’m open to suggestions from my own Being, and I’m comfortable with the knowing that when there is some action for me to take, I’ll know it.  In the meantime, the best I can do is simply to relax and let go and allow Source to carry me.”  Being a conscious co-creator, these two stances go beyond mere proselytizing because the thoughts and feelings that I have, formed out of the beliefs that I hold, form the foundation of the reality that I do experience.  Therefore, those two different Ways of Being produce very different experiences for me.  It reminds me of the following section from the CC writings:

Ease and Magic

It’s interesting to note that when you no longer require the complications of mental entanglements, things just drop naturally into place. Everything happens with a kind of ease. The ease itself is the nature of the new creation. Stepping into the natural flow, understanding how Framework 2 (Potentiality) surrounds and encompasses Framework 1 (Physical Manifestation/Reality), and allowing your knowingness to move easily within the larger framework. This is the realm of true magic.

Also, I came across the following quote from Seth, and it fits in very well here:

“Your whole civilization is immersed with the idea that the way to solve a problem – any problem, private or worldwide – is to exaggerate it, see its worst projection; and this, then, is supposed to make you take proper action.

The approach unfortunately solves no problems, and only compounds them, whether the nation is trying to solve problems of energy, or social problems, or whether an individual is try to overcome a dilemma.

You are so immersed in that method of problem solving, however, that it comes back to haunt you. At least you can be aware of it and alert.

I will give you the answers to your questions, but they are not the way to solve your problem–and against all conventional knowledge, reviewing the mistakes of the past does not lead to wisdom.

When you become so worried, of course, you concentrate even further on the problem–how bad it is, and what will happen if it becomes worse in the future.

The problem is, therefore, compounded to whatever degree–and when I give you both such reasons, then sometimes you use them, the two of you, to ADD TO your private and joint self-disapproval.

(snip)

The belief is that if you frighten yourself badly enough through imagined projections and imagination, you will be frightened enough to change–but the nation or the individual following that method does not change for the better, but compounds the original condition, concentrates upon it until it looms larger than before.

Such methods cause panic, national or individual.

(snip)

To solve a problem you begin to minimize its characteristics, diminish its importance, rob it of your attention, refuse it your energy.

The method is the opposite, of course, of what you are taught.

That is why it seems to be so impractical. I have said this so many times–and I do realize it is difficult for you–but you cannot concentrate upon two things at once. So to the extent that you concentrate upon your pleasures, your accomplishments, and to the extent that you relate to the PSYCHIC AND BIOLOGICAL MOMENT, you are refreshing yourselves.

You are not projecting negatively, and you are allowing the problem to un-wrinkle, un-knot.

You are denying it the energy of your attention that keeps it going.

You do not spend time thinking that you have not used your abilities properly. You take it for granted that you ARE using them properly, and that allows them to fully develop.” ~ The Personal Sessions, Book 4, Session 08/14/78, pgs 332-334.

Love,
Me.

“Direct cognition is an inner sense. In physical terms you might call it remote sensing. Your physical body, and your physical existence, are based upon certain kinds of direct cognition, and it is responsible for the very functioning of the reasoning mind itself. Scientists like to say that animals operate through simple instinctive behavior, without will or volition: It is no accomplishment for a spider to make its web, a beaver its dam, a bird its nest, because according to such reasoning, such creatures cannot perform otherwise. The spider must spin his web. If he chooses not to, he will not survive. But by that same reasoning – to which, of course, I do not subscribe – you should also add that man can take no credit either for his intellect, since man must think and cannot help doing so.

“Some pessimistic scientists would say: ‘Of course,’ for man and animal alike are driven by their instincts, and man’s claim to free will is no more than an illusion.

“Man’s reasoning mind, however, with its fascinating capacity for logic and deduction, and for observation, rests upon a direct cognition – a direct cognition that powers his thoughts, that makes thinking itself possible. He thinks because he knows how to think by thinking, even though the true processes of thought are enigmas to the reasoning mind.” ~ Dreams, “Evolution,” and Value Fulfillment, Vol. 1, session 908.
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