The Shift Diaries
Adventures in Expanding My Awareness
In appreciation of your creations, your energy automatically relaxes. Tension dissipates; judgment slips away. And in that energy, you express a freedom to actually create what you want, not necessarily through the action of winning your lottery.
You may be surprised at how you may create many different types of manifestations without the amount of money that you expect you should be incorporating. Amazing occurrences happen within your reality if you allow them. You are creative beings, and you may create from nothing. For this is what you do automatically and naturally – you create things from nothing.
Elias --transcript #1400
How I quickly altered my reality by genuinely appreciating
Before I begin, let me say that my reality altered quickly once I genuinely appreciated my current circumstance. Really quickly—like in a month or two there was a major shift. AND it took me about three years of the most painful misery, struggle, and practice to move myself from almost constant discounting to genuine appreciation. AND I still wasn’t appreciating myself, although I did appreciate manage to genuinely appreciate a specific aspect of my current situation.
Condensed back story
September 11 of 2000, I totaled my beloved car, a pristine black 1988 Honda Prelude I’d kept in immaculate condition since its birth. (Now, that’s interesting in itself, isn’t it? My relentless opposing of and pressuring myself manifests as a car crash one year before the ‘real’ 9/11.) This seems to mark the beginning of a series of painful losses. I was in a financial tailspin. I was forcing energy fruitlessly trying to start a new business. I totaled my beautiful car at a point where I couldn't afford a comparable replacement. My favorite and most special cat—think of him as my favorite child to get the impact I felt—sickened and died (this affected me the most). By the end of 2002, I filed bankruptcy after a long slide downhill, sold my house, and fled everyone and everything I knew. And throughout it all, I was using "you create your own reality" to blame myself for all my undesirable manifestions.
It wasn’t till the end of 2001 or early 2002 that I connected with Abraham and Elias information. By then, I was pretty far gone. I’m a gifted student of whatever I choose to immerse myself in, but climbing out of my current pit turned out to be a tricky proposition. Because what I didn’t realize till much later was that I was leaving behind the familiar to live according to the redefined reality of the unfamiliar. For me, although I didn’t recognize it as such at the time, Shift Trauma wasn’t a concept, but an on-going, horrible experience. And this was Shift Trauma without any other-worldly experiences whatsoever. I took my Shift Trauma straight, in its most confusing form: everyday life falling apart in every direction.
Do I need to say I felt like a total victim of myself? From years of Seth studies, I didn’t blame anyone but myself for my troubles. But I hadn’t understood that blaming myself was still “exploring the experience of victim.” It took me a long, long time to reconfigure that energy.
After fleeing the wreckage of my life, I struggled to find some way to feel better. And struggled and struggled. Using appreciation sounded simple and maybe doable even to a complete wreck like me, but for a very long time I was such a long way from being able to get anywhere near genuine appreciation. I was so strongly focused on my pain and disappointment and discounting of myself for the many losses I’d manifested that I went back to that negative groove constantly, automatically. I was a judging, self-discounting MACHINE!!!
But I kept throwing myself at the barrier I’d erected. I read Elias transcripts. I subscribed to the Abraham weekly CD of excerpts from their workshops. I wept and hated myself and my life. I read Elias transcripts. I listened to Abraham CDs. I wept and hated myself and my life. Lather, rinse, repeat.
Trying to find something to appreciate when I hate my whole life
Abraham pushes appreciation constantly. Elias also tells us it’s a very powerful tool. After peeling away years of influence from typical “positive thinking” concepts, it’s clear to me that they’re not talking about “a smile is just a frown turned upside down” kind of appreciation. Or, as Abraham would say, “You don’t want to paste a smiley face sticker over your empty gas gauge.”
Appreciation the way Abraham and Elias talk about it is not about trying to feel better by saying positive instead of negative things to myself, or pretending to feel better when things have gone to shit and I feel like my world is coming to an end. It’s about choosing to focus my attention on what’s working instead of what isn’t. It’s about looking at my current situation minus the discounting and comparison that is keeping my attention glued to its deficiencies. It’s about something that sounds way too simple to actually work the miracles I think I need when my life is unpleasant. It’s about the magic of changing my perception.
Now, Elias and Abraham keep telling us the information they're offering is simple—too simple for us to be comfortable with. "There must be more to it than simply moving our attention in directions that feel good to us," we all whine. "Tell us more! Make it clearer! Reveal the SECRETS!!! We want MAGICAL POWERS of manifesting!!!"
First I’m stuck on wanting to change things
I was doing that same whining. I was determined to change things. I hated what had become of my life. I couldn’t keep living like this—I said that to myself often, despite the fact that I was living like that. THINGS HAD TO CHANGE! But that was the problem. I wanted to change THINGS. What I needed to change, as Elias tells Jens [transcript #1400], was not outside me—my life and all the objective details that I was so unhappy with—but inside.
Now, I certainly understand that concept, don’t I? And don’t I “agree” with it? I was sure I did. But I couldn’t for the longest time let go of my conviction/expressed belief that things outside me had to change in order for me to feel better. (This is a perfect example of disagreeing with a belief. I would have insisted that I didn’t think things had to change for me to feel better, but I was feeling terrible because of how things were in my life.)
I was practicing this “change the inside” approach somewhat (didn’t I say I BELIEVED in the concept?), but I hadn’t gotten this inside-out approach to “work” in the areas that were the source of my deepest pain. I kept whipping myself with all the crap I’d manifested. My cat especially—how could I have gotten so off-balance that it led to the death of my sweet boy?
Then I’m stuck in automatic responses of judging myself
My attempts to change from the inside out weren’t working because I couldn’t let go of discounting myself and comparing myself and judging myself. I see this now, but at the time I had no idea that this was the problem. At the time, I was on an automatic response self-discounting merry-go-round that never stopped.
Nothing in my current life seemed to compare favorable to my previous life, or to anyone else’s life that I chose to focus on. I was a brilliant, adult, talented person, with brilliant insights and—oh, who knows what I thought made me exempt from suffering the way I did? The fact was that my life felt embarrassing. I couldn’t begin to explain how I’d gotten myself into this mess. I thrashed around like a rat in a trap, but I couldn’t escape my condemnation of myself. Every direction I turned I found evidence to support my negative judgments of myself.
From this synopsis of my
state of mind, it should come as no surprise that nothing changed until I found
a way to feel good with things just as they were.
Too simple?
It’s clearer and clearer to me that changing perception is exactly as simple as Abraham and Elias say it is. The hard part for me, and most people, I'd assume, is to genuinely recognize the power of this simple advice, to stop complicating it, and then actually practice the new, simple way with the same conviction and dedication I do anything I completely accept and genuinely believe.
In the Jens transcript [#1400], Elias tells him (emphasis mine):
- In the time framework that
you accept yourself and your creations now as being acceptable,
and you discontinue striving to be better or to acquire,
you shall create, easily. Then you shall surprise yourself, for you shall view
it to be as magic, and all that you desire appears, for you shall create it. As
you continue to strive and you continue to view that you’re not good enough yet,
that you have not provided enough yet, you shall continue to manifest what you
are manifesting.
- Appreciate what you have created rather than discounting what you have created. Notice what you have and allow yourself the appreciation of that, which changes your energy expression. In the appreciation of what you have already manifest, rather than discounting what you have already manifest, you shall relax your energy which creates the allowance. (And he gives this example in connection with Jens’s criticism of his old car, “Your vehicle may be old, but it also transports you.”)
I love it that this so clearly lays out the simple concepts both Abraham and Elias harp on constantly:
Acceptance. Where I am is okay. I and all my choices are acceptable. Manifestations and emotions are simply expressions of my energy. They are information, not absolutes. Use that information to steer/make other choices rather than beating myself up by concentrating on this is/I am unacceptable.
You get what you concentrate upon. Concentrating upon "I can't/don't get what I want" gets me more of that. Of course, the trick here is comprehending what exactly we're concentrating upon. And what Elias tells Jens clearly is, if you notice that you don’t like what you’ve got, THAT is what you’re concentrating on.
Allowing is key. As long as I insist things must be different (opposition), I hold myself to those manifestations/energy expressions (the old “what you resist persists” phenomenon). As soon as I find some way to genuinely accept and appreciate what I’ve generated (allowing), I release the energy that is expressing those aspects I don’t like. Genuine appreciation allows energy to flow differently, perception to shift, things to change.
Forcing appreciation
When I first tried to deliberately use appreciation as a tool, I did it because I was in such pain about my life that I was desperate to find a way to feel better. Looking back, I see that I was only going through the motions of appreciating. I wasn’t accomplishing the feeling of genuine appreciation. This meant I wasn’t generating emotional communications that indicated my energy/attention had shifted. I was trying to escape my pain and fear, so my focus of attention was on resisting what was, not allowing things to be different. I was trying to appreciate for ulterior motives rather than genuinely.
I was trying to appreciate because I wanted things to change. I would make lists of what I appreciated, but I wasn’t really able to feel genuinely that I had anything to appreciate. I was so focused on my losses that I discounted what I had left.
I tried to pry myself loose by appreciating very basic things I tend to take for granted, the kind of things that come to mind when I hear about people struggling in the wake of natural disasters, or living on the streets of India, those things I've create so effortlessly that I forget to value them: clean hot and cold running water in the house, a sound roof over my head, protection from the elements, an incredible variety of easily accessed food, lots of choices of inexpensive and decent products of all kinds, sound roads that make it easy for me to get anywhere I choose to go, a sound infrastructure of bridges, power stations and power lines, etc. These are all marvels, but I usually just edit them out of “creations I could appreciate.” Everybody I know generates those expressions. Where was the nice life I used to have?
Sometimes when I considered what it might be like to try to live without these things I take for granted, like when I’d see TV coverage of people struggling with daily life in the wake of natural disasters, I would feel momentarily appreciative of things I tend to dismiss. But in my fixation on my losses and my misery, this approach didn't make much of a dent. Sure I had hot showers, but my energy expressions had led to the early death of my beloved cat. Sure there were roads to take me anywhere, but I had totaled my favorite car and no longer felt comfortable spending much money on gas. Sure I had a roof over my head, but it wasn’t as nice a roof as I was used to, and I'd created a bankruptcy, and had to sell my beautiful house, and I was going to have to start over in my mid-fifties, and...oh, I was locked into Shift trauma big time.
In the early part of this adventure in Shifting, feeling good seemed almost out of the question. It was all I could do to focus on being neutral about my situation from time to time. This seemed better than feeling terrible about it, though, so I made an effort to cultivate neutrality for a while. Meager as that seems in the appreciation arena, neutrality was an improvement in energy from my constant judging and discounting. Being neutral meant I'd "just notice" everything around me and in my life. Sometimes I felt so very Zen, but mainly I still felt miserable.
I couldn’t even tell whether I was headed in the right direction
Abraham uses an analogy I like about the challenges of using the Shifted approach to get from where you are to where you want to be. It goes like this:
- When you’re on the road from Phoenix to San Diego, about halfway there, you get to Yuma, which is out in the desert and not very appealing. It certainly isn’t your desired destination of San Diego, even though it’s on the way to San Diego. But if you trust that you’ll reach your desired direction by continuing in the direction you’ve chosen, you’ll eventually get to San Diego.
- But if instead, you get to Yuma and get all freaked out because you’re not yet in San Diego, or you start discounting yourself because Yuma seems so lacking in anything you like—how did you end up in such a shitty place???—or you wonder whether you’re ever going to get to San Diego, you can easily get disoriented. Instead of listening to your inner guidance that offers clear indication of your direction, you’re drowning it out with all this inner discounting and questioning. “Yuma! I don’t want to be in YUMA! How did this happen? What am I doing wrong that I’m in YUMA?” Doing this could get you so disoriented that you head back to Phoenix.
- If you fixate on questioning yourself and discounting yourself and NOT LISTENING TO YOURSELF while you’re on this journey to your desired destination, you can end up going from Phoenix to Yuma, and Yuma to Phoenix, back and forth, over and over, beating yourself up for not getting to San Diego.
And this was what I was doing. I couldn’t get past “Yuma” because I couldn’t recognize it as a way station on my journey. Instead, I judged myself viciously for being in this desolate, depressed area.
Now, both Abraham and Elias offer variations on choosing a workable direction. They say things like, “choose what you prefer,” “choose what feels good,” “choose what offers you least conflict,” “choose the easy way.” But I have all these judgments and limiting beliefs about good-feeling choices being okay. When I feel excellent, I make good feeling, least conflict choices easily. When I’m deep in the dismal swamps of discounting and judging myself, that advice doesn’t go far.
So, as I attempted to feel better, I spent a lot of time unclear about whether I was going in the right direction, which meant I ended up “going back and forth between Phoenix and Yuma” in my ongoing pain, fear, and confusion. I spent a lot of energy beating up on myself for that. However, there were some tear-soaked moments where I’d suddenly come to and announce shakily to my cats, “We’re in Yuma. We aren’t where we want to be yet. We’re in Yuma and that’s okay.”
I didn’t really believe it was okay, but sometimes I managed to use this analogy to create a few fragile moments of respite from my relentless self-excoriation.
Concentrating on what I hate about my life
Halloween day of 2003, after a year of misery in Santa Fe (the misery had nothing to do with Santa Fe), I moved to Washington state where I knew no one. I'd never been in this area. The first and only house I looked at suited me adequately (my friends say I have "good house karma," and I usually easily find great places to live). The house was small and old, but had a million dollar view over Port Townsend Bay, and a great view is at the top of my list of house requirements. Because of the funky qualities of the house, which, in my perception, suited my "reduced circumstances," I felt like I was living as I had when I was a student. This was fitting, considering it seemed I was in Shift [Trauma] School. (I still didn’t realize I was in Shift School, of course.) This funky little house represented my "fall" from a comfortable life to starting over at a much lower level.
After moving in I painted almost the entire smoke-stained interior. At the time, I was pissed off that I had to do it, that the landlord wouldn't have it done or pay me to do it, that I had to spend my money – almost $300—on paint and supplies. I didn’t appreciate that I’m an experienced, expert painter, which allowed me to feel competent to do this task. I didn’t appreciate that at that moment I had $300 to put toward this important—to me—task.
I did not paint the kitchen, which someone had carefully ragged (faux finished) a grayed yellow. I didn't like the kitchen color, but the house was a complete pain to paint (being old and strange), and surely I was not going to have to stay here long, so I left the kitchen. I then proceeded to carry on with being miserable about my life and "where I was," which was represented by this little old house, a clearly “substandard” living situation by my previous standards.
Slowly, slowly, slowly I shift my concentration
The new paint looked really nice, and I slowly got to a point where I could appreciate that. I learned to start my morning by noticing how much I liked the color and simply appreciating how the light hit the walls. This seemed like pretty inadequate appreciating considering the magnitude of my suffering, but it was a start.
I would then look around the room and try to find other things to appreciate—art on the walls, the trees blowing in the wind outside, the quality of the light, the ever-changing weather, the incredible view over the bay. I'd usually manage a mild, but genuine appreciation for being warm and snug in bed, and having the cats around me, all cozy and sweet. But I found appreciating really challenging at first because I was so depressed and distressed that almost any direction I aimed my attention could trigger my sense of loss and tears. If I had stock in Kleenex, I'd be rich from those miserable years. I tried, rather ineffectually, to make certain subjects, like the death of my cat, off limits: "If you can't think something nice or neutral in that area, don't even go there."
Automatic responses of discounting myself continued to undermine my attempts at appreciation. Even if I generated a small sense of genuine appreciation for something, I’d almost instantly turn my attention to an aspect of my life that pained me, and I'd quickly slip back into feeling depressed. I repeated this cycle of trying to appreciate/automatic discounting for a long, long time. From my exodus from Arizona in early November of 2002, it took me about two years and nine months to turn the tide—and I beat myself up constantly for how long it was taking me to "get a grip," which did nothing but prolong the misery. (Can you say, "You get what you concentrate upon?") But, despite ongoing setbacks, I slowly, slowly, slowly took tiny steps toward shifting my attention away from what I hated about my life.
Looking back on this process, it seems very much like remodeling an almost ruined structure. For a very long time the mess only increases, and it's discouraging work that appears to be making no progress. Then, slowly, things start to come together. I don't know that it had to take me as long as it did, but for me it did take a lot of time. I'm now committed to holding strongly to not beating myself up for how long it took and how much of my life it seems that I ruined and lost along the way.
A tipping point into genuine appreciation
At some point in the middle of 2005, I had made sufficient progress in feeling better that I seemed to reach a tipping point. Sometime in the summer, I looked around me and spontaneously chose to acknowledge how well I was manifesting now instead of how insufficient things were compared to my former life (ah, that tricky beast, comparison!). I suddenly marveled at the perfection of the same place that had previously seemed so insufficient.
I would stand outside the little funky house and notice (over and over) the good points: I had manifested a place with a big fenced yard that had been easy to fix up for the cats (I fence my cats). The house was set well back from the little road, giving me the privacy I prefer. It had a little laundry room with a washer and dryer. It had a small garage, a rare thing in these parts. The yard was spacious, and free of trees and very sunny (big deal here in the land of lots of rain and lots of big trees), but there were beautiful giant trees very close by on other properties. Bald eagles flew by my windows. The house had truly a million dollar view. I was only a few minutes walk from the beach. I could walk to the library and the grocery store and the hardware store. I had very nice neighbors.
I would notice every detail of how perfect the place was for me, over and over and over. I wasn’t making myself do it. It seemed that I had finally turned my attention enough to allow my perception to reveal everything in a altered light, showing me now the miraculous perfection of my manifestation of this place. I got into a self-perpetuating loop of a genuine soaring feeling of appreciation—and I did it through the same process I’d previously used to maintain that self-perpetuating loop of discounting and despair. I simply focused my attention, but now it was pointed at what worked, what I had accomplished, what I liked, what pleased me.
Through this genuine appreciation, I achieved a relaxed and ecstatic state almost every day. I got to a point where I didn't want to move from this house. I was in a perfect place! I found it effortlessly! Look at what I'd done magically!
This was way before that Jens appreciation segment [transcript #1400] was published, yet I did exactly what Elias suggested to Jens, and with exactly the magical effects he promised.
The spell is broken
I then decided to paint the kitchen, since I winced whenever I looked at the color. I had decided I loved being here and would probably stay. I went through all the effort of choosing the color, preparing the kitchen, and finally started painting with Abraham CDs playing continuously to reinforce my good feelings. At some point as I painted, a little voice in me says, "Now you can move."
What!?!? I'm not moving! I'm painting the fucking kitchen! I've decided I’ll stay here!
What was that about? I shook my head and kept painting. I thought, “I’m not going anywhere, so don’t even talk to me about it.”
An impulse is born
As I painted the second day, I heard noises outside. Because I was listening to Abraham every moment of the day, that almost downed out any other sounds, but I could make out, dimly, something was going on outside.
There was a small, kind of nasty old trailer (mobile home) on the lot next door. It was about six feet from my lot line. When I'd moved to this place it had been inhabited by a guy in his early twenties and his girlfriend. They had loud fights, played loud music, and generally lowered the tone of the quiet street. It often felt like they were living in my house, because they were so close. Eventually that girlfriend left. A new girlfriend, somewhat quieter, came on the scene. And when the trailer went up for sale in May (along with the house I was in—they were owned by the same man), that noisy young couple found another place to live. At this point in the story, the trailer had been blissfully empty for almost three months. It was like heaven for me because I love quiet and privacy.
So, I stopped painting the kitchen to check out the sounds and I see that someone is moving into the trailer. Hm...
The someone turns out to be a 19 year old boy, just graduated from high school, and just kicked out of his parents' house, a problem looking for a place to happen, as it turned out. The very short version of the story: he made the previous kid look like an angel from heaven. Having this new guy as a neighbor was so bad it was actually funny. If it had been fiction, no one would have believed it.
As the insanity next door escalated, literally by the hour, I'm trying to apply Abraham's principles: I can choose to feel good no matter what; outside circumstances do not determine my choices. And I'm doing okay at this. But a small impulse did cross my mind—maybe I could move.
I proceeded to annihilate that impulse with logic, because I didn't believe I COULD move. There was the money problem. There are the cats, which narrow my rental choices. There was my fragile, newly achieved sense of stability which seemed linked to where I was living. There was the upheaval and sheer daunting effort of physical relocation without anyone to help me. Moving seemed out of the question. I phoned Richard, who owned the trailer, my former landlord and a sort of friend, and kept him humorously, but persistently, informed of the chaos he had brought to the neighborhood with this tenant. My intention was to recreate peace where I was.
Things change magically
At this time, another friend, Carlyn, was moving. I'd met Carlyn by following some strange impulses the previous November. At the beginning of the year (it was now summer), Carlyn had sold her big, beautiful house on the water to some people from San Diego and had been renting it back from them while she looked for a house to buy across the bay. She finally found a place, and I was helping her with her move.
One morning during the kid-in-the-trailer chaos (which only lasted about ten days total), while I waited for CArlyn to get ready, I ended up standing behind her house on the bank overlooking the water, admiring the peace and beauty of the view and surroundings. I had never stood behind her house before. In fact, in the ten months I'd known her, I'd never really taken in the house, although I’d been there a fair number of times, but always at night. It seemed that I didn't even realize it was right on the water. Now, I'm usually attentive to such details, but for some reason, I hadn't seen her house clearly.
But now I'm enjoying the opposite of the atmosphere that exists beside my house. It’s peaceful, beautiful, with quiet neighbors. And another small, tentative impulse suggests, “Maybe I could rent this place.”
But how could that be? It's too expensive for me now. Nonetheless, I asked Carlyn what was going to happen to the house, since the people who bought it weren't going to move here for five to seven years. Carlyn said they were worried. They didn't know what to do, being so far away. Well, I said, maybe I could rent it, but...well, I can only afford what I’m paying now, so that probably won't work.
I get into allowing mode
I went back to my house and my life, and by now, I so appreciated my place that I actually thought it would be ridiculous to move. Nothing could suit me like this place! Surely Richard would get rid of his obnoxious tenant and someone nice would move in next door. I gave some thought to Carlyn's place, but I could come up with a list of reasons why it was not a great idea, starting with, "How could I afford to heat 4000 square feet of house?" Although I yearned to return to surroundings more like what I was accustomed to, which the nice, newer, upscale, big house represented, I decided that if it wasn't going to be easy, I wouldn't pursue it. Besides, why would I want to move from my wonderful place?
Elias tells Jens [#1400]:
- In appreciation of your creations, your energy
automatically relaxes. Tension dissipates; judgment slips away. And in that
energy, you express a freedom to actually create what you want, not
necessarily through the action of winning your lottery.
- You may be surprised at how you may create many different types of manifestations without the amount of money that you expect you should be incorporating. Amazing occurrences happen within your reality if you allow them. You are creative beings, and you may create from nothing. For this is what you do automatically and naturally – you create things from nothing.
Exposure and receiving
Carlyn really liked the idea that someone she knew and liked might live in her beloved place. So, she phoned the people in San Diego, recommended me highly, and told them what I could afford to pay for rent. The people in San Diego then phoned me and asked me to rent the place.
But I was still hesitant. I wanted to meet them first, because this was going to be an unusual arrangement. And I loved where I was. I wasn’t sure I wanted to move. So, they came up for a day (the last day of September), and we liked each other immediately, and I agreed to move in.
To make things even more effortless (if moving can ever be truly effortless), my good friend Pam had made arrangements to visit for four days (and these arrangements had been made months before this move was even being considered) and her arrival the very next day coincided precisely with my sudden packing up and relocating. Her little vacation in western Washington turned into a lot of work helping me move, but I really appreciated having a good friend there to give me a hand and acknowledge this miraculous transformation with me.
Elias tells Jens [#1400]:
- Now; I shall also express to you to be practicing paying attention, noticing, and allowing your own expression of exposure. For what is significant in your movement presently in this allowance is your allowance to receive, and the prerequisite to receiving is exposure. For if you are not open, you cannot receive, and receiving is significant in this scenario.
- ...if you genuinely wish to be or want to be creating what you have expressed to myself this day and your vision, it is necessary that you allow yourself that exposure, and therefore allow yourself an openness to receiving. It is not a question of giving; it is a question of receiving. It is not a question of acquiring; it is a question of receiving.
It seems that exposure and receiving play a big part in this story, but I’m not altogether clear about those aspects. I was being open about my situation to everyone and no longer felt so full of self-loathing about it. Perhaps that’s the exposure factor here.
Acceptance broke the spell
There are many aspects of this shift in my circumstances that fascinate me. One is about acceptance, which I often struggle with. In this case, when I chose to finally genuinely accept, wholeheartedly, where I was as represented by that little old house, I symbolized that acceptance by painting the kitchen. And it was like those moments in fairy tales where the heroine or hero finally does the dreaded thing (kisses the frog, embraces the undesirable) and the spell is broken—that little voice in my head telling me, “Now you can move.”
And instead of getting all obsessed with having to find some way to get into the magnificent house, as I usually do when I really want something that seems out of reach, in this case I quickly and easily went to an allowing mode, deciding, “If it's not easy, I don't want it.” I was really, truly okay where I was, finally, and that loosened all the screws holding things as they were.
Then there's the part of this story that was set in motion almost a year prior to moving into Carlyn’s big house. I didn’t realize that a change in perception was underway when I overrode logic (“This isn’t in your budget!”) and impulsively chose to take myself out to dinner election night. Joking about the election results with some people who were waiting to be seated got me invited to sit at their table. That’s how I met Carlyn.
At that point, I was still mostly miserable, although, looking back, I can recognize that there were small signs that my energy was shifting a bit for the better, because I had decided to embark upon a sort of rehabilitation program for myself that involved making myself go out of the house after dark during the winter (dark sets in about 4:30 PM where I am) to be around other humans more, and also, to find a group to sing with.
Long before I noticed objective evidence or subjective communication that things were changing for me, this small intention to move myself out of my shell of despair must have opened a way to connect with the line of probabilities that led to a desired change.
Elias tells Jens (emphasis mine) [#1400]:
- In this, if you choose to incorporate what I have expressed to you this day in our conversation and genuinely express that without an expectation – for what shall be the expectation if you are merely moving into a appreciation of what you are creating now and what you have created previously? There is no projection to future; therefore, there is no expectation of future and there is no expectation of alteration of now if your focus is directed to the appreciation of now – in that, you shall change your experience and you shall recognize, for you shall sense it and you shall feel it within yourself.
- You shall recognize the change in your perception. Perhaps not immediately, for at times the change in perception appears to be quite subtle as it gradually moves in a different direction. But eventually – and not within an extended time framework, within a short time framework – you shall notice and express to yourself, in the moment in which a significant movement has already occurred, you shall express to yourself, “Ah, I am noticing. My perception is different. It matters not, and I am appreciating of what I am creating now,” which is an acceptance and a trust of you. You cannot appreciate if you do not accept, for acceptance is a prerequisite for appreciation.
Tantalizing areas to explore further
Here are some things I want to think about more (later).
Elias and Abraham both suggest that we can eventually create deliberately precisely what we desire. But it seems I manifested this nicer house by not wanting it. It’s that paradoxical “let go and let God” thing, where when we stop resisting what is, we allow what we desire. But what we’re really allowing to manifest is the natural flow of our energy—not a particular thing or circumstance. The different house, the improved circumstances, reflect our energy expression. However, at the moment, there’s nothing about my experience that suggests any deliberate or precise choosing.
So, what does this mean for me about deliberate creating? In short, shouldn’t deliberate creating mean I can deliberately win the lottery? But in order to do that, do I have to not care if I win the lottery? Yet I’m sure there must be people winning the lottery who do care.
But maybe it’s not winning the lottery that I really want. Maybe my real desire is to allow the flow of my natural energy expression, which will reflect my sense of my abundant wondrousness (as Elias would say) in a myriad of ways. Does this mean I’ll eventually alter the translation of my desires from assuming that I want a thing or a particular circumstance to recognizing what it is that I really desire—which is always the allowance of the natural flow of my energy?
This relates to transcript #1404, where Rob and Elias are discussing a situation of conflict for Rob involving a woman Rob knows. Elias asks Rob what he wants in the conflicting situation, and Rob says:
- ROB: What I’m trying to allow within myself is for two energy fields to flow through each other without any kind of stickiness.
- ELIAS: I am quite understanding. Interesting answer, and I am acknowledging of you of that answer. For this is an expression and an evidence of your movement into more of a familiarity with yourself in genuineness, and also a widening of awareness. The automatic response, which you have moved beyond as evidenced in that answer, would be “I want the other individual to stop.” But your answer has moved beyond that. There is a recognition of yourself in your participation, and there is an expression evidenced that you are attempting to identify genuinely what it is that you want in that moment.
I’ll
have more to say about this. Stay tuned.
Resources
The Shift Diaries
began with my e-mail correspondence with Anne K., owner of Contact Publishing,
and publisher of The Shift: A Time of
Change, a collection of Elias
material compiled by David Tate.
Follow this link to purchase a copy:
www.contact-publishing.co.uk./contact_publishing_titles_catalogue.html#The_SHIFT
* All Elias quotations are from transcripts on the Elias Forum website: http://eliasforum.org. The Elias Transcripts are held in © copyright by Mary Ennis. Contact Mary Ennis for a personal session with Elias: eliasforum.org/speak_elias.html
** All Abraham quotations are held in copyright by Abraham-Hicks
publications:
www.abraham-hicks.com. For the calendar of workshops with Abraham or to purchase their materials, visit:
www.abraham-seminars.com/