Elias Digests – attention (doing and choosing)

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attention (doing and choosing)

“The moment one gives close attention to anything, even a blade of grass, it becomes a mysterious, awesome, indescribably magnificent world in itself.” ~ Henry Miller

Paul’s note: this Digest incorporates yet another approach to a central theme since the onset of the sessions: accepting self.

“All that I have expressed to you, within all of the sessions that I have offered to you all, move[s] in this one direction [of accepting self]. I offer many different analogies, many different stories, many different angles to approach this one subject of acceptance of self and the selfishness of self in the terminology of essence, which is to be viewing self first, for in this you automatically begin to be accepting of other individuals, and you shall find also that within your own acceptance of self, the expression of other individuals matters not, for you begin to offer yourself the understanding of other individuals and their belief systems and their motivation in their behaviors.

“This is not to say that I express to you to be uncaring, to hold no compassion, to hold no sensitivity, for these are elements that you have created within your emotions within this physical dimension, but you may be quite expressive of these emotions and these creations, and you may also be offering all of these to yourself.” [session 339, November 13, 1998]

In 1999, Elias introduced a method that I call NIRAA (Noticing, Identifying, Recognizing, Addressing to, Accepting beliefs/self), pronounced ‘nigh-rah.’ There are four basic steps in which to accept beliefs and belief systems, and thus self:

ELIAS: “... I have expressed previously that within acceptance in your movement within physical focus, the process that you have chosen to be incorporating – not merely you, but ALL of you as individuals within this physical dimension – is to be initially noticing – these are your steps that you engage – and once you are noticing, then you allow yourself to move into the step of recognizing and identifying, and once you have allowed yourself to be recognizing and identifying, then you move into your next step of addressing to, and subsequent to your addressing to, you begin acceptance.” [session 455, August 25, 1999]

In Summary, NIRAA means:

Noticing beliefs (the process of making invisible beliefs visible and the subconscious conscious through self-observation. Similar to the perennial challenge of “Know Thyself.”)

Identifying and Recognizing specific beliefs (As self-observation becomes more regular, more an everyday habit (i.e. a belief!), you begin to connect various beliefs to various choices, actions, reactions, and motivations. This stage is marked by varying degrees of conflict, anxiety, joy and/or happiness.

Addressing to the beliefs (lessening conflict, anxiety, depression, fear; increasing happiness, joy, relaxation, allowing more for diverse perceptions, and moving closer to accepting self. This can occur without a thought process.)

Acceptance, neutrality, complete lack of judgment while still holding preferences and opinions; there is no absolute good, bad, right, or wrong = “it matters not!” while recognizing we each still hold belief systems.

The process of accepting self is not strictly linear. Since we each hold many thousands of related beliefs, we actually engage all four actions simultaneously in varying degrees. So the process is more like a four-way, multidimensional (holonic) feedback loop:

Noticing beliefs <==> Identifying, Recognizing, examining beliefs <==> Addressing to beliefs <==> Acceptance, neutral state

To help with this process, Elias has identified ten foundational belief systems, adding that there are many, many, many beliefs within each belief system. However, these are not concrete, separated parts, but primary aspects nested together seamlessly in the conscious mind. For example, aspects of the belief system of duplicity are present in varying degrees in each of the other nine. Therefore, the belief system of duplicity houses our moral and ethical beliefs – values we use daily to judge self and others. On the flip side, this belief system holds the key to accepting self and others, and in my view, doesn’t mean doing away with morals and ethics (i.e. belief system of duplicity) at all. It means taking them to a whole new level, where preferences and opinions exist but black and white absolute judgment of right/wrong, good/evil, etc. no longer exist.

Here, then, is a summary of the ten foundational belief systems:

relationships (interpersonal/intrapersonal = self/other)
duplicity (morality/ethics)
sexuality (sexuality/gender/orientation/preference)
truth (relative truths/Absolute Truth)
emotion (emotional/feeling)
perception (perceptual/attention)
the senses (inner/physical sensing)
religious/spirituality (exoteric/esoteric)
scientific/elements of physical reality (scientific/rational)
physical creation of the universe, including accidents and coincidences (creation mythos)

These belief systems develop in relation to our over all life conditions: intentional, behavioral, cultural, and social factors. They also form a typology – a general “worldview roadmap” – that we can trace through the various stages of life. For example, all the above belief systems emerge during infancy and continue to develop as we grow through childhood, adolescence, adulthood, and seniorhood

There are no guarantees, either, that our belief systems will all develop at the same rate. They don’t. But they do complement each other and are nested together. For example, someone can have wide spiritual experiences and understanding, and yet have rather narrow moral beliefs. Or someone can have wide scientific understanding and very narrow, even arrested emotional or interpersonal beliefs, and so on. Together, they cover a wide matrix of potential experience.

Now, let’s take a closer look at the moral belief system, or what Elias calls the belief system of duplicity. This is the value system in which Elias talks about beliefs in right and wrong, good and evil, better and worse, more and less ethical, etc. Research in cognitive and developmental psychology has shown that our moral values develop in distinct stages that transcend and include their predecessors. Researchers agree that moral judgment changes-in-time roughly from preconventional to conventional to postconventional stages. For example:

Jean Piaget (anomy = preconventional ==> heteronomy = conventional ==> autonomy = postconventional)
Lawrence Kohlberg (magic wish ==> punishment/obediance ==> naive hedonism ==> approval of others ==> law and order ==> prior rights/social contract ==> universal ethical ==> universal spiritual)
Carol Gilligan (selfish ==> care ==> universal care)
Ken Wilber (egocentric = my interests only ==> ethnocentric = me and my tribe/group ==> sociocentric = me and my religion/country ==> worldcentric = me, my tribe, my group, religion, country in the context of universal concern for all me’s, tribes, groups, religions, countries, etc.) (1)

However, research also shows that overall development is nonlinear, so exactly how our beliefs develop through these distinct stages, in relation to all our other beliefs, intelligences, and abilities is still not completely understood. However, I bring this up because there is a very important distinction to make here. Namely, when Elias talks about noticing self, focusing on self, trusting self, accepting self, and paying attention to self, a person with an egocentric belief system of duplicity will interpret that in a very different way (more selfish, even narcistic), than a person at an ethnocentric/sociocentric stage (more tribal or group mentality), or someone with a worldcentric belief system of duplicity (universal concern for all). This is a very important aspect of personality development to factor in because it shows the crucial impact of our growth and development on our belief systems and our attention.

Moreover, a snapshot of the world at large reveals a complex “forest” of people in various stages of moral development in any moment point. Overall, we can see people who are egocentric, ethnocentric, sociocentric, and some even truly worldcentric (e.g., the Dalai Lama, Mother Teresa). If we use the analogy of an acorn, seedling, sapling, tree, and senior tree to represent the stages of the “forest” of people, then we begin to understand why there is still so much strife, violence, poverty, dis-ease, and alienation overall in the “forest.” While we are on individual journeys through various developmental stages, a simultaneous snapshot of the “forest” of six billion focuses shows multitudes of acorns, seedlings, saplings, trees, and senior trees in any moment-point.

That is to say that our dimension (what Elias calls Regional Area 1) is not designed to have every focus at a mature, worldcentric stage at the same time. Ever. Thus, with constant change and overlapping development, we can begin to see that the “forest” of people has chronic tensions and strife caused by preconventional belief systems in conflict with conventional, postconventional, and transconventional belief systems! A simple example is the constant stress between teenagers and the authority of parents, schools, police, etc. in generation after generation. Another example is the constant conflict between religious, scientific, and political ideologies who claim sole and absolute ownership of universal truths. This list goes on and on.

Yet, through long periods of historical time, we can also begin to see a “center of gravity” emerge in terms of cultures and societies. And that systemic “center of gravity” appears to be changing-in-time toward greater numbers of people at conventional and postconventional belief systems. Again, it's not a linear process, but more like a spiraling, nested process. This is an optimistic view of the human experience as it evolves and changes-in-time towards more mature belief systems overall.

Put another way, Elias claims that we are all in the process of becoming – a journey from birth to death to transition to the remembrance of essence (which is not physical, space-time memories but a focus of attention that includes lucid awareness of self as essence = one-made-of-many). As we each “remember” or widen our awareness to include more subjective awareness, the more universal our belief system of duplicity becomes, individually and collectively. And as Elias is quick to point out, duplicity ain’t going away any time soon. Ever. It’s in the blueprints for our dimension. So this key belief system – as it moves from preconventional, to conventional to postconventional to transconventional – is one way to measure our personal and collective growth toward the remembrance of essence.

This is also another way to understand what the shift in consciousness, as Elias calls it, portends. Namely, greater numbers of the “trees in the forest” shifting toward wider or postconventional versions of belief systems. The belief system of duplicity remains, again, but more and more focuses may hold a postconventional and wider version of it. However, everyone starts out at preconventional! And so one theory is that there will be some kind of acceleration into postconventional stages, and another is that the preconventional stage itself may morph into something that doesn't last as long. This is something that we will be able to observe systemically in the coming decades.

Now, Elias claims that while anyone can learn to accept individual beliefs, people we consider saints, sages, and spiritual leaders have never accepted a belief system. Therefore, since no individual to date has accepted a belief system, the potential for postconventional and transconventional belief systems (how Elias defines the action of accepting beliefs) are of great importance on individual and collective scales.

Still, in practical terms, most people are still dealing with preconventional and conventional belief systems. Postconventional belief systems tend to be on the leading edge. For example, preconventional scientific worldviews hold that the moon is made of cheese and Santa Claus is a real person as absolute truths. Conventional scientific worldview holds the mechanical laws of Newtonian physics, the Big Bang and all life are random, chance creations as absolutely truths. And, postconventional scientific worldviews include the breakthroughs of quantum mechanics, relativity, a more systemic approach to energy-matter, theories of consciousness as relative truths within a much more complex Kosmos.

While Elias does not distinguish belief systems in terms of preconventional, conventional, and postconventional stages, he has validated that these broad developmental areas accurately apply to the entire human family (see session 1246, January 16, 2003). Still, Elias has offered a lot of information regarding working with individual belief systems through related topics like:

Digests:

accepting self (belief systems)

avenues of communication

being in the now

belief systems; an overview

focus of essence; an overview

noticing self

“the secret of life”

the straight little sapling

triggers

trusting self

you create your reality

Elias has also offered several exercises to assist in the Noticing, Identifying, and Recognizing of belief systems. (Follow this link to find out more about the NIRAA method.)

Exercises:

relaxation; holding attention within the now (accepting self)

Ferris Wheel: noticing how and when we hold attention outside of self

visualization: holding attention upon self (the mountain is you!)

noticing your energy field (the camouflage of tension)

engage conflict: holding attention upon self

paying attention to self in the moment

STOP: focus your attention in the now

pay attention to self

For example, here is a summary of the pay attention to self exercise:

Identify “your most familiar response” to any situation. (Notice self!)

Ask, “What am I DOING?” (NOT “Why am I creating this?” OR “What am I creating?” Doing returns attention to self in the now.)

Ask, “What is my motivation for DOING this?” That is, examine what motivates this knee-jerk response. (The goal of all these exercises is to become more familiar with self = attention.)

As you focus your attention on evaluating what motivates you, you will offer yourself information on what beliefs influence your DOING and motivation. That is, identify beliefs, once again! And also, what specific beliefs trigger your automatic responses.

Have a nice day... the whole idea is to neutralize conflicting beliefs by noticing, trusting, accepting, and paying attention to self.

All of which leads to this new Digest published in May of 2003.

According to Elias, attention is not our thoughts, feelings, or dreams, but literally the thinker of the thought, the feeler of the feeling, the dreamer of the dream. It follows, then, that whatever the attention as thinker/feeler/dreamer concentrates on through the laser focus of willful intention and belief has a powerful impact on our overall perception, cognition, and being. This affects every aspect of our lives – health, relationships, abundance, creativity, and fulfillment.

Elias uses the concept of “attention” to say something similar. Namely, that by noticing how we direct our attention in any moment, how we choose and do, we can create new choices, new probabilities. After all, we get what we concentrate upon. So with a little luck, effort, and playfulness we come full circle toward accepting self and others.

In summary, attention consists of three nested, simultaneous processes:

Objective awareness = a doing function = expresses an action = implements choices = free will.

Thought process = function of translation and interpretation = not designed to create our reality = translates information which we offer to ourSelf through the avenues of communication. Thought = also intricately associated with visualization = the mechanism most closely associated our belief systems = the translation may be confused, imprecise, dependent upon the direction of our attention.

Subjective awareness (translated through avenues of communication) = dream imagery, emotions, physical senses (vision, hearing, taste, touch, and smell), inner senses (empathic, conceptual, differential time), impulses, impressions, physical body expressions (symptoms of dis-ease), language, intuitions (another term for inner senses and dreams), and imagination.

Therefore, attention is NOT limited to our thought process.

Shift attention to the action mechanism = implements choices = more clearly identify the moments in which our thoughts are accurately translating and in which our thoughts are not accurately translating.

Accurately translating = in harmony with the action and choosing function. Emotional communication of pleasure or acknowledgment, a feeling of being pleased with ourSelf, our direction, or of comfort.

Not accurately translating (tremendous influence of our beliefs in association with duplicity) = attempting to alter our choice = we will present ourSelf with a communication of discomfort or anxiety or confusion.

According to Elias, thought does not create our reality, attention and perception do. In other words, the thinker of the thought creates our reality, not the thought. Thought is an interpretation or translation function. Therefore, conscious creation is NOT fully dependent upon a thought process. Consciousness, awareness, attention are not intrinsically dependent upon thoughts. Thus, conventional New Age interpretations of “you create your reality” have it BACKWARDS.

Finally, keep in mind the idea of preconventional, conventional, and postconventional belief systems in relation to attention. Attention is not a fixed thing, as consciousness is never fixed but like an ever unfolding flower. Thus, attention changes-in-time too, and can be developed to more deeply accept, notice, trust, focus on, and pay attention to self as essence (inner ego), not just an isolated outer ego separated from the rest of nature. In this sense, all of the exercises offered by Elias, taken as a whole, work in concert toward this realization.

ELIAS: “Within physical focus, your attention is directed very precisely. You are a lens. Visualize a camera with hundreds of lenses. This camera shall be essence. You are a lens of this camera. All of these lenses are occurring simultaneously, and are also all influencing and lending energy to you within the action of the accomplishment of this shift presently. You are also influencing of all of these other lenses, or focuses.

“I define what you term to be a lifetime as a focus, for lifetime is encompassing. In this, your lifetime is the sum of all of your focuses within this particular physical dimension. Each segment is a focus. They do not occur linearly. You do not move into birth, move through a focus, die, and remanifest into another focus. This is your perception of your linear time framework, but it is relative only to physical focus. It is how you have designed this particular reality. It is not reality in other areas of consciousness or other physical dimensions beyond this particular dimension. It is a perception, although the element of time holds its own integrity.

“Therefore, I shall not express to you that time itself is not an entity, for it is in a manner of speaking, but it does not appear in the same manner that you view it within this particular dimension. Therefore, when you view other focuses of yourself, they are occurring presently. They are not past; they are not future. We may be referring to other focuses for your understanding as future or past, merely for the reason that this is how your thought processes operate within physical focus, but be remembering that all of your focuses are simultaneous.” [session 270, March 19, 1998]

VICKI: “I still don’t know how we tipped the table! (Elias grins) And in attempting to do that again, it hasn’t been successful, and that’s confusing to me because the belief systems are all the same.”

ELIAS: “It is not quite so dependent upon your belief systems ...”

VICKI: “Well, that’s become clear!”

ELIAS: “... as it is dependent upon your action in relaxing your attention. You allow yourself the singularity of thought.

“Let me express to you, within the teachings within your physical dimension of the action of meditation, as you begin to learn to incorporate this action of meditation, you are instructed to focus singularly upon one object, upon one thought, upon any one element. The reason that you are instructed to focus singularly upon one element is that you are directing your attention in one area and not allowing distraction in any other area, and this offers you a facilitation in the area of relaxing your focus, relaxing your hold upon your focused attention. Your attention begins to relax, and as your attention begins to relax, you allow for the incorporation of other aspects of your reality. You allow yourself your periphery. You allow yourself to engage more of YOU than merely one focus of attention.

“You need not necessarily be moving in the direction or action of meditation. This is merely one direction of attention, but you may be incorporating this relaxation of your attention, and you may be incorporating more of your reality and viewing. Therefore, you view the particles of this table separating, and not so very much of the solidity.” [session 333, October 19, 1998]

ELIAS: “In actuality, you do hold many focuses, that which you identify as lifetimes. I express the terminology of focuses quite purposefully. The entirety of the summation of all focuses within one particular physical dimension would be designated as a lifetime, so to speak, and all of those focuses – which you identify as lifetimes – are different directions of attention within the lifetime occupied in one physical dimension.

“You are essence. Therefore, you are much larger and greater than you view yourselves to be within one particular focus. This now which you identify, and the you that you know and that you are familiar with, is one focus of essence.” [session 488, October 20, 1999]

ELIAS: “... many individuals express the inquiry to myself, ‘How many focuses of attention do I incorporate in this physical dimension?’ In the moment, I offer a physical number. This is NOT an absolute. It may or may not fluctuate, dependent upon the individual essence and its activity. This may incorporate many different actions: fragmentation, mergences, other essences that may choose to be interactive and in mergence with any particular essence and creating other focuses in that moment of mergence. There are many different avenues of movement that are incorporated within consciousness. But in translating those movements and actions in relation to numberless essences and within the expression of all of consciousness, there are many fluctuations that occur.” [session 881, August 13, 2001]

ELIAS: “The point is to be paying attention to self and what creates triggers within you. For as you allow yourself to view what triggers automatic responses within yourself, you may also become more familiar with the beliefs that are influencing these automatic responses and thusly allow yourself more choice.” [session 928, October 16, 2001]

ELIAS: “... This, in actuality, is a tremendous challenge in relation to many individuals, and I am recognizing the challenge that you are presenting to yourself, for projecting your attention is quite familiar. I have expressed to you all, this is the reason that I am interactive with you each, for this movement in acceptance and in holding your attention within the now is quite unfamiliar to you all, and therefore it is easily expressed in projecting your attention outside of yourselves and outside of the now.

“You have, in actuality, designed your societies in this manner, in which much of your actions are concerning either past or future, and little significance is placed upon holding your attention within the now; and as you are aware, it has become quite automatic to not be paying attention to the now.

“But I may also express to you, I have been expressing to individuals from the onset of this forum, the greatest term in your language may be viewed as ‘noticing.’ This is actually your greatest tool, and you are incorporating this tool to be offering yourself more information and opportunities to practice. How shall you practice if you are not noticing? And you ARE noticing, my friend.” [session 947, November 01, 2001]

SHAHMA: “... Is there anything else that you want to say to me?”

ELIAS: “Merely to be noticing, my friend, and to be practicing. Practice moving your attention; recognize that your attention is not thought. Your attention may move to thought, but thought is not your attention. Therefore, practice moving your attention and manipulating your attention and noticing automatic responses.” [session 1024, March 04, 2002]

TRACY: “I wanted to ask you if you had any advice to give me, and everyone else, how to live the best possible life. I don’t even know what that means, but what advice would you give me out of all your experience and wisdom? I heard you say ‘living in the moment’ a lot.”

ELIAS: “Hold your attention upon you and in the now, and in that simplicity you shall create your greatest ease.” [session 1116, June 16, 2002]

JOHN: “I’m a little confused about what attention actually is. I might be paying attention to about umpteen different things in the moment, but how does it work? When you say ‘attention,’ people are giving answers as to one singular thing they’re paying attention to, and that is never the case. Is what you’re putting thoughts can you clarify that?”

ELIAS: “Attention is not thought; attention is you. YOU are the attention.”

MALE: “Attention from your essence?”

FEMALE: “So it’s not your body that’s necessarily the attention that you’re...”

ELIAS: “No.”

FEMALE: “It’s something, that other sort of ... what seems to us more vague, less specific.”

ELIAS: “What are you? Who are you? What generates you as being you?”

FEMALE: “That is the attention?”

ELIAS: “Yes.” [session 1290, March 15, 2003]

LORRAINE: “I have a question about being in the now, in the moment. Where is thought in that? Do you have to try to stop thinking?”

ELIAS: “Not necessarily. The role of thought is significant, but what is important to be generating is a balance, a balance between allowing your attention the flexibility to move to communications, action, and thought. The pitfall with thought is that your attention moves to thought to the exclusion of other information, to the exclusion of what you are actually doing and to the exclusion of your communications, and you rely upon thought in manners it is not designed for.

“You rely upon thought to create your reality, and this is not its function and therefore you disappoint yourselves for it does not create your reality. You rely upon thought to be offering you accurate information, and your association is that it is a communication, which it is not. It is a translating mechanism. It translates what you do and what you believe and what your communications are.

“But if your attention is not moving to the actual avenues of communication, thought does not accurately translate, and this becomes confusing for you think one expression and you are doing another, or you are thinking in one direction and you are feeling another, for you are not offering the thought process accurate information. You are concentrating your attention upon that as the main operator of your being, as the control point, as the steering wheel, and it is not.

“Your choices, what you actually do, are your indicators of what you are expressing. This is the reason that is it very important to pay attention to what you are actually DOING, paying attention to yourself, and this is challenging for it is unfamiliar. You are familiar with projecting your attention outside of yourself and holding it upon any and every expression that you encounter outside of yourself, and you are quite familiar with placing your attention upon each other rather than yourselves. This is not to say that you place your attention upon self to the exclusion of other individuals, but that you are aware of what you are expressing in association with your interactions with other individuals.” [session 1447, September 27, 2003]

ELIAS: “I express to you all as always, pay attention! Notice! Be aware! And remember, you already have widened your awarenesses, all of you, and many of your methods that you have incorporated previously are not necessarily, in your common vernacular, working any longer. Express a willingness to be exploring the unfamiliar, for it fits more acceptably in your reality now, and the familiar does not fit as well any longer. You may choose difficulty or you may choose ease. Whichever you choose, I express my supportiveness and encouragement to you, for whatever you choose is to your benefit and is worth.” [session 1496, January 17, 2004]

ELIAS: “Assuming personal responsibility for other individuals is not helpful. It is distracting to you [and] it is distracting in your attention, which perpetuates projecting your attention to the other individuals rather than paying attention to yourself and your own energy. You do not incorporate helpfulness to the other individual, either, in assuming personal responsibility for them.

“It is enough that you generate responsibility for yourselves. That in itself is an enormous task. I would not concern yourselves with assuming personal responsibility for other individuals. That does not accomplish what you want. Conversely, paying attention to yourself and expressing your preferences and not concerning yourself with the expressions and choices of the other individuals allows you to more clearly be supportive and an example, which IS helpful.” [session 1532, March 20, 2004]

ELIAS: “... Within one day – each day – not to concern yourself with subsequent days but in the present day, evaluate what you are doing. If you face yourself with what you perceive to be choice in ANY expression, whether it shall be to participate in this conversation or to participate in a socialization with other individuals or whether you shall consume water or whether you shall consume another beverage, whatever you perceive as choices that you are engaging, it is a matter of listening to you.

“The manner in which you listen to you is you pay attention to your communications and signals emotionally. If you hesitate in relation to a choice, the likelihood is that that choice is NOT your preference. If you experience ease in a choice, it generally IS a preference.

“Preferences are not enormous expressions that are solidified. Individuals become confused in relation to preferences, for they do not recognize that they are engaging preferences or not preferences in many different mundane actions. You may incorporate a preference of what type of shoes you choose and the shape of them. That is a preference that influences your choices.

“Paying attention to what you are actually doing and how you are responding to yourself in relation to your choices, THAT is how you evaluate what are your right choices. There are no absolute right choices.

“But in association with what we are discussing this day, we are not incorporating the idea that there is no right and wrong. For within each of you, you do express right and wrong, which is quite associated with the subject matter of this discussion of your greatest fear and your greatest irritation. For were you not to incorporate the association of right and wrong, you would not incorporate the greatest fear or the greatest irritation.

“What the right choices for you are what allows you your freedom. What the right choices for you are what expresses your preferences. What the right choices for you are those that acknowledge you, that allow you to experience, express and be aware of your own freedom, of your own strength, of your own power, and not denying yourself. What the wrong choices for you are those that deny you. That is the most significant.” [session 1742, April 02, 2005]

ELIAS: “This is the point. You may debate until what you express as the end of time and that shall not generate any more of widening of your awareness. It shall not answer your questions any more than you are answering them now. This is the point, this is the reason that we interact with each other, to offer yourselves information how to accomplish these actions.

“You are all aware of the importance of balance. You all want to be expressing your own freedom and generating a balance within yourselves, creating an evenness and a centeredness within yourselves. You all want to be generating acceptance. You want your own freedom and your own directedness of self. The manner in which you accomplish that is to be paying attention to you and to your energy.” [session 1861, October 22, 2005]

ELIAS: “In paying attention, even in one day, to every action that you incorporate and how your energy is reflecting and how your energy is being projected in EVERY MOMENT of one day, I express to you, you shall offer yourself considerable information concerning what you do not pay attention to and what influences other actions and scenarios.

“What you generate in each day repeatedly is what creates the avenue to generate events that confuse you and that you do not like and that you do not want. But you are moving in those directions in each day and not noticing the mundane, what you term to be insignificant actions repeated over and over, which express a particular type of energy, which creates a direction of reinforcing certain actions continuously. Therefore, they gain momentum and eventually you create an event that you do not like or that is unwanted.

“And you sit and you express to yourself and to other individuals why did I create this? How did I create this? Why would I create this? And you are stuck with no response, for you have not been paying attention to all these repeated actions that you are incorporating that are associated with expressed beliefs that you are unaware of objectively. This is the reason that it is important to be paying attention in each day to all of what you are doing. That is your indicator of your energy.” [session 1861, October 22, 2005]

KAAN: “I have one question I want to ask this evening. Actually I’m changing the subject a little bit maybe, but I want to explore the relation between awareness, consciousness, and essence. You may have talked about these. I’ve been reading the previous sessions, and I’m bringing in some of my understanding. In making these one, and when they are one there is no division ... so awareness-growing incorporates more areas of consciousness.

ELIAS: Correct.

KAAN: The essence itself is holding an awareness, and the focus is holding of its own awareness as well, or the essence within focus holds an awareness. I don’t know exactly how to formulate this, but the consciousness being a field, all the links within it are in coordination and arrangement and acting certain actions for the viewing of the essence, for the experience of the essence. But what is changing? I tried to see where the will is or where the identity is, because the consciousness already is and it’s already containing the probabilities, but where the individual identities carry it in the expansion of that awareness....

ELIAS: Allow me to address first to the idea expressed that consciousness holds all of the probabilities already. This is incorrect. The probabilities are created within each moment of becoming. They do not lie before you.

KAAN: So where are the probabilities coming from? Consciousness is responding to it and taking a shape accordingly. Is that true? Where is the probability coming from, and where is it enacted?

ELIAS: It is being created within each moment.

KAAN: Out of ...?

ELIAS: You and your choices. Each choice that you create creates probabilities.

KAAN: But again, coming to my identity, that’s the primal substance of it. That’s where I’m coming, again coming back to essence or consciousness, but who is that ‘I’?

ELIAS: YOU are that I! (Grinning)

KAAN: You are that I as well!

ELIAS: In a manner of speaking, for within consciousness there is no separation, although there is a distinction of personality tone, which is you or myself or another individual or another essence.

KAAN: So ... but then that makes ME consciousness.

ELIAS: Yes.

KAAN: So the probabilities are coming out of consciousness then?

ELIAS: In a manner of speaking, for they are being produced by YOU, and you ARE consciousness, and you ARE essence.

KAAN: They’re being filtered through a particular direction or the intent that I may be, but it is coming from consciousness.

ELIAS: Which is YOU. It is not coming TO you. It is not coming FROM somewhere. It is being created in every moment by YOU.

KAAN: Okay. So I am as consciousness, coming up with the probabilities. But the shape they are taking now, the substance of the probability, is again consciousness?

ELIAS: Yes, and is being produced.

KAAN: Okay. So from consciousness to consciousness, and what is connecting this is this particular direction ... I’m trying to get the identity which I am. I am consciousness, but I am also a particular tone within consciousness.

ELIAS: Correct.

KAAN: And also what I produce is nothing but consciousness.

ELIAS: And energy.

KAAN: And energy. So in this, where does awareness fit? Because awareness is also another aspect of it, because it grows.

ELIAS: The awareness is continuously held. It is merely a difference, within different aspects of essence or consciousness, of where you focus your attention within that awareness, but the awareness is always.

KAAN: Okay. Awareness is then a quality of consciousness.

ELIAS: Yes.

KAAN: So when the attention of the essence – or directedness, that direction – falls into a particular area of consciousness, it then experiences the awareness contained within that region of consciousness? Would that be correct?

ELIAS: Correct.

KAAN: So an expansion of awareness is the same as the attention growing!

ELIAS: Correct.

KAAN: But now we introduce attention here! What is attention, with respect to essence? How does essence, being just a movement itself, narrow it or open it?

ELIAS: It is the individual lenses. Each attention is a lens.

KAAN: Okay. So we have an infinity of those within an essence, but essence is pulling this from consciousness. These lenses are again coming from consciousness!

ELIAS: You are separating! They are not two things. It is all action.

KAAN: So action, the essence ... being an essence or taking the identity of an essence is also an inherent quality of consciousness. So consciousness is experiencing its own nature through its own nature ...

ELIAS: Correct.

KAAN: ... of attentions and essences and all that.

ELIAS: Correct.” [session 264, February 01, 1998]

CARMEN: “First of all, I’d like to start with my current mode of employment which, at the present time, I have decided to continue. Now, I definitely do see myself expanding creatively a lot in the future, but I’m trying to get myself to the point where, as you mentioned last time, I’m watching the street performers but I’m also open to noticing the strangers approaching me with gifts.

My first question does have to do with my current employment. The situation is that the client who has been my major source of currency has created a physical condition that is preventing her from working in the present now that I am choosing at this moment. I do have currency that I could live off of but I really don’t want to do that, so I’m trying hard to use my imagination as well as contacting people in my field to create a steady flow of projects.

The problem is that if I give myself any imagery in dreams or concrete symbols that I’m not creating or going to create what I want, I plummet. Now, right before this session I did get some hopeful feedback in the form of a potential new client, but there are times when I get so discouraged, and with that feeling I then feel like I’m sabotaging myself so I have to snap out of it and become really upbeat.

But would you please tell me whether I am creating strong probabilities of a steady flow of projects, even though sometimes I feel like it’s hopeless?

ELIAS: Yes, you are creating now these probabilities. You are battling within yourself between the familiar and trust. But be remembering, this is the battle between the large dog and the small dog. (2) Listen to the small dog. Remember, the large dog barks loudly but it has no teeth.

CARMEN: Now that’s interesting. When you say no teeth ... now, the big dog is my fears?

ELIAS: Yes, and also the expression of familiarity in automatic responses.

CARMEN: Like my extreme ... like if something quote ‘negative’ happens, I immediately think of the most dire consequences – me on the street, a bag-person or something.

ELIAS: Correct, and this is not what you are creating. (Emphatically) Look to what you are creating. Hold your attention, as I have stated to you previously, in the now.

The large dog turns your attention to the future and anticipation and speculation. In this, it barks quite loudly, for it is the expression of what is familiar to you, and it is the embodiment of your fear and your conflict and is the expression of your automatic responses in familiarity.

But the small dog is moving and is active, and as you continue to pay attention in the now to THAT expression, you shall be, in a manner of speaking, feeding the small dog and starving the large dog.

Even though the large dog presents itself and appears ominous, remember, it has no bite. It is merely noisy.

CARMEN: So when I do take a nosedive emotionally, I can just reassure myself. Because, boy, when I’m there, those fears seem like they have huge teeth and that the situation that I fear is very real. But if I just reassure myself that the small dog is active even when I’m just feeling hopeless, then that may ease some of that turmoil.

ELIAS: Correct. The small dog is within the now and reassures you that the noise that the large dog is expressing is merely noise. In actuality, although it may seem that it bears huge teeth, it does not, for the actual bite is not occurring.

CARMEN: Okay; yes. As you said, I’m still battling. Battling is a good term, because I’ll be doing, I’ll be thinking, feeling like the small dog, and then all of a sudden – wham! So I will work on that even more.

ELIAS: Allow yourself, my friend, to pay attention to what you are choosing and doing. And as you turn your attention to what you are DOING, you may divert your attention from the battle.

For the battle that is raging is between your thought processes and your emotional communications; these are the expressions that are in conflict with each other. You express conflict, for your struggle is attempting to choose between one or the other. But simultaneously you are already choosing actions; you are already DOING.

These two aspects of yourself, the emotional communication aspect of yourself and the interpreting/translating/thought aspect of yourself, are battling with respect to what you are doing, for they are assessing differently.

CARMEN: So is my thought process the little dog and my emotions the big dog?

ELIAS: No. Your thought process aligns with the big dog. This is a large source of the driving force of the circle that you create.

Let me express to you an explanation of what occurs. You choose a direction, and you choose an action in association with your direction.

Now; as you choose a particular movement or action, your thoughts are attempting to interpret and translate the action. They are translating your communication to yourself through your choice and offering you an interpretation. BUT your thoughts are also quite strongly aligned with your beliefs; therefore, the influence of your beliefs is expressed in strength through your thoughts.

Now; as your thoughts create the translation, which is strongly influenced by beliefs and strongly influenced through the belief system of duplicity, there are judgments that are expressed through thought. Your subjective awareness thusly responds to your translation objectively and creates an emotional communication.

Now; I am expressing this identification to you in a manner which appears to be what you may term as a following process. In actuality, it is not. In actuality, the doing aspect of you, or that which chooses, creates the choice, expresses the action. The thought process simultaneously is translating and interpreting, and simultaneously also the subjective awareness is communicating. They are creating three different functions simultaneously. They are not in actuality following each other consecutively. In this, you are offering to yourself three different actions within the same moment.

Now; what you are paying attention to is the translation which is being expressed through thought and the communication which is being expressed through emotion, but you are not entirely focusing your attention upon the actual communication of the emotion. You are paying attention to the signal, which is the feeling, and you are paying attention to the thoughts.

These are the expressions that are in conflict, for the emotional communication is not entirely being received. The signal is being received – the feeling that you identify as anxiety or fear or what you identify as depression. You are paying attention and recognizing the signal, but you are not entirely receiving the message that is being expressed to you, the communication of that emotion which is identifying to you in the moment precisely what you are creating.

CARMEN: Can I guess what the message might be?

ELIAS: You may.

CARMEN: Because I’ve really tried to be interpreting my emotions, and I do get stuck in just identifying them and sometimes I don’t even do that correctly. But when I feel panic and fear and depression, is the message that I’m not trusting the small dog?

ELIAS: Yes, but let me also express to you that your communication in actuality is more precise than the mere generalization that you are not trusting the small dog.

CARMEN: Can you give me a hint? (Laughs)

ELIAS: Let us view your example. You express to myself that you have offered yourself imagery that one individual that you interact with in relation to your job, as you term it, is not allowing you, in your assessment, to generate finances in the manner that you want. But you also have presented yourself with another individual that may potentially allow you to generate the finances that you want. Correct?

CARMEN: Yes.

ELIAS: Now; first of all, I shall express to you that I am speaking to you, in your terms, in relation to your beliefs, for in actuality another individual does not provide you; you generate this. But for the moment we shall proceed in this manner, as an example.

Now; in this, you present yourself with the imagery of the new individual and the potential.

Now; you have created that. There is an action that you have generated in the doing aspect of you, that aspect of you that generates choices. Therefore, you have already engaged and executed a choice. You have presented yourself with what you view as a potential.

Now; immediately your attention shifts from what you are creating to the thoughts, and the thoughts immediately begin expressing doubt and concern, and you begin thinking in a manner which is translating your imagery, or your choosing, through the filter of your beliefs.

CARMEN: Which have fear connected to them?

ELIAS: Correct.

Now; the thinking aspect of you moves into questioning of your actual ability to be creating and generating what you want. The thinking aspect of you is discounting of yourself and is expressing to you worry, projecting into the future, and expressing questioning ‘what if?’

CARMEN: Exactly; yes.

ELIAS: Now; the emotional communication aspect of you is also immediately generated. It is not reacting to the thought process. It is simultaneously offering you a message which precisely identifies what you are expressing and creating within self in the moment.

It is merely that you are paying attention to the thoughts first. You wait to turn your attention to the emotional communication until the signal becomes loud.

Now; what you are expressing to yourself in the emotional communication, in an example such as this, is a precise identification and message that communicates to you, ‘In this moment, you are creating automatic response to this belief, and this belief, and this belief. In this moment, you are discounting of yourself. You are not trusting your ability. You are projecting your attention outwardly. You are allowing situations and other individuals to dictate to you what your choices shall be and what your direction shall be. You are projecting your attention futurely.’

The influence of your beliefs in this present moment, which is being translated objectively through your thoughts, is that you do not hold the ability to generate what you want, you do not create all of your reality, and that you are victim to situations and other individuals. But you are merely receiving the signal – fear, anxiety, depression, sadness.

CARMEN: So it really is a matter of feeding that small dog.

ELIAS: Correct.

CARMEN: But it still sounds like that despite the periods of hopelessness, depression and anxiety, I still am creating some probabilities where I am creating what I want.

ELIAS: Yes.

CARMEN: That’s good to know, because I was getting the feeling that I had to be up all the time, and that if I let myself feel the feelings, that I was just back at square one.

ELIAS: No, my friend. You are creating a process in which you are continuing the battle, but in the battle you are also moving into an awareness of what the battle is, and in this, you are not discontinuing your movement. You are not ceasing your creations. You continue to be allowing yourself to generate what you want. You are merely continuing the battle between these two expressions of yourself.

But this also is an opportunity, for this offers you information concerning automatic responses and also how these expressions function within you.” [session 893, August 30, 2001]

SUE: “So I guess all of this leads into my other question that I wanted to ask about, which has to do with relationships with men. One thing that struck me, I read something in one of the transcripts from a few months ago where you were talking about how it’s not just a matter of us creating our reality, it’s that we choose what we create. That really hit home with me, because I do tend to think, well, I have no idea why this is happening; I’m creating it but I don’t know why, and I don’t want it. And that kind of made me stop and think. So I guess what I’m realizing is that this means that I have been choosing not to have a relationship with a man, right?

ELIAS: Correct. Pay attention to what you are choosing.

SUE: Because part of me ... my first reaction is that that can’t be right, it’s just something awful that happens and I don’t know why. But another part of me thinks, well, I haven’t even had a date in years, and that sounds to me like somebody who is really choosing not to have a relationship! (Elias chuckles) So then what I keep coming back to is ... well, I’m not sure about it. You also talked in one session about the differences between wants and desires, but that your desires go with your intent and that those get realized even if it doesn’t go along with what you may think that you want.

ELIAS: Correct.

SUE: And so I’m wondering, the whole thing of wanting to have a relationship with a man and yet not doing anything about it, does this mean that being involved is so against my intent that I’m never going to do this and I should just give up on the idea, or is there something else going on that I just haven’t figured out? Do you know what I mean? I don’t know whether I should just give up on the idea or what.

ELIAS: Not necessarily. But what you are presenting to yourself is yet again moving into another layer of exploring your relationship with you and allowing yourself to become more familiar with HOW you create your reality.

Now; in this, I shall express to you, many of you that have been interactive with myself for time frameworks in relation to this forum have allowed yourselves an assimilation of information concerning yourselves that we have all discussed together, moving yourselves closer and closer, so to speak, into the remembrance of self, which is being accomplished through the action of allowing yourselves to create an intimate relationship with self and becoming familiar with all of the aspects of yourself. In this, you have allowed yourselves, at this point, a clear recognition for the most part of WHAT you create. You have allowed yourselves to be noticing, paying attention to WHAT you are creating.

Now; your automatic movement of questioning in relation to what you create, as you allow yourself to be more clearly identifying that these ARE your choices and that you ARE creating all of your reality, is to question yourself in certain expressions of your creations and ask yourself WHY you create certain expressions within your reality; but let me express to you, the ‘why’ is not the point.

The point of this shift in consciousness is to be offering you an objective realization of HOW you create your reality. The ‘whys’ are the influences of your beliefs. Therefore I may express to you, the ‘whys’ matter not; the what and the how hold significance. For previously within many of your focuses, you offer yourself limited identification of even WHAT you are creating for you are not paying attention, for your attention has been familiarly projected outwardly and held in relation to other individuals or situations or circumstances or physical manifestations within your reality, be they creatures, be they objects, be it money – it matters not. Your attention familiarly has been projected outwardly and not held upon self. Therefore, I may quite genuinely express to you that in actuality many times you have not even allowed yourself to identify WHAT you are creating.

Now you notice, and you are not merely noticing what you are creating but you are also noticing perception. You are noticing communications. You are noticing influences of beliefs. Now your attention is moving into the direction of allowing yourselves to identify the HOW of your creating: how do the mechanisms of your individual consciousness move together to be expressing instruction and direction to your perception and therefore move your perception to project an actual reality.

In this, you are beginning to assume responsibility for self and question the movements of your own energy: how do you create specific expressions that manifest in an actual creation of reality in relation to any particular subject matter?

The manner in which you offer yourself a clearer viewing of how you are creating your reality is to be paying attention to the working mechanisms of yourself, defining them accurately in their function, and paying attention to how you direct them in relation to their actual function. In this, you create avenues of communication which incorporate specific functions to communicate to you identifications of different aspects of your movement and of your reality.

You also incorporate an aspect of your objective awareness of your consciousness that moves in action – a doing function – an action incorporating function. This function is that which chooses.

You also incorporate a function of translation and interpretation. This function is thought. Thought is not designed to be creating your reality; it interprets and translates. It translates information which you offer to yourself through the action of choosing and through the avenues of communication that you incorporate within your focus. Thought is an interpretive mechanism.

Now; thought also is intricately associated with visualization. It also is the mechanism which is most closely associated with your belief systems, for its function is to be translating. Therefore, it is intricately associated with the expressions of your beliefs. At times your thought processes translate input in communication that you are offering to yourself, but the translation may be confused. It may be unprecise, dependent upon the direction of your attention.

Your attention is not thought. Attention is a different expression of yourself than thought. In this, you confuse yourselves, for you automatically associate attention with thought as synonymous, but attention is not thought.

Now; dependent upon how you are directing your attention and whether your attention is directed clearly in association with your desires, and paying attention to your communications in relation to your desire, your attention may be in a manner of speaking scattered, or it may be directed outside of yourself, and therefore the mechanism of thought which translates information to you may be confused, and it may offer to you a translation of a want which may not necessarily be an entirely accurate or precise identification of the desire.

The want is a translation objectively of communications that are expressed within you concerning your direction and your desire. But many times the transmission, in a manner of speaking, of the communication is scattered and garbled, and the mechanism of thought incorporates confusion in attempting to be decoding the message, so to speak. Therefore, it associates and identifies with familiar expressions. It also draws upon the expressions of your beliefs, and offers you its translation of what you are attempting to be communicating to yourself.

SUE: So, can I ask you, when you talk about thought and attention being different, is that like attention is when you look on a scene, and thought is when you start categorizing the elements in it and say this is a tree and this is a dog, and kind of put labels on things? Or is that not quite...

ELIAS: In a manner of speaking, yes.

SUE: Because it reminds me of stuff I’ve learned in school, so I’m trying to translate it so that I understand! (Laughing)

ELIAS: Correct, correct! Your thought processes are moving in much of your time framework of your focus, [but] your thought processes are not continuously engaged. You do incorporate some time framework within your physical focus in which you do not engage your thought processes [and] you are not engaging this mechanism of translation.

But for a tremendous percentage, so to speak, of time framework within any individual focus, you do incorporate a great expression of reliance upon this mechanism of translation, and therefore you do engage this mechanism of thought quite frequently and consistently. But you have also, in relation to your beliefs, moved your attention in reliance of this mechanism to extremes and have confused its function. You have altered your definition of its function. You have blurred your recognition of its design within your individual realities. You associate it, as I have stated, as being synonymous with your attention, and it is not. Your attention is directed to it quite frequently and at times excessively, and this reinforces your association of the synonymousness of attention and thought.

You also incorporate beliefs that thought is the center of your concentration and that thought creates your reality: you incorporate thought first and subsequently you manifest a particular expression within your reality. This also is incorrect, for thought does not direct your perception. It does not direct what you create. It translates. It is your objective translator.

SUE: So when I think in terms of relationships with men, maybe I do feel some kind of desire that’s related to my intent, but then when I think about it, I translate that desire into an idea that’s based on my belief systems and the images that I see around me – is that correct? – and that may be an incorrect translation of what this real desire is?

ELIAS: Correct.

SUE: Okay, I kind of get that.

ELIAS: And the manner in which you offer yourself more clarity and greater understanding of what you are creating within your reality is to be paying attention to HOW you create your reality. For in terms that you may objectively understand within this present now, you do incorporate a type of process in how you create your reality. In actuality, they are all occurring simultaneously, but you do incorporate communications to yourself. You also incorporate the aspect of your objective consciousness or awareness that is the action aspect or function, which this action function of your focus actually implements choice.

Now; this action mechanism or function of yourself is not directly influenced and associated with your beliefs. It is the mechanism that chooses. It implements choice. It expresses choice. It directly expresses direction to your perception, which creates the physical manifestations of the action of the choice.

Now; once any choice is implemented, for the most part you automatically turn your attention to the translating mechanism of thought, but thought does quite intricately express association with beliefs, and this is the seat of your belief systems. Therefore, it is also the seat of the one belief system that intertwines itself with all others, that of duplicity. Therefore, thought is what shall express quite clearly your associations with the judgments of good or bad in association to choice.

SUE: Okay, I sort of understand that.

ELIAS: The function of your emotions is to be expressing a clear identification, communication, of what you are creating in the moment. The function of the action aspect of yourself is to be implementing choice. The function of the thought mechanism of yourself is to be translating the message of emotion and translating the identification of choice. All of these mechanisms that you have created within your individual focuses influence the movement of your perception.

But in this, as you allow yourself to be paying attention to the action mechanism, so to speak – that which implements the choices – you may also more clearly identify the moments in which your thoughts are accurately translating and [in] which your thoughts are not accurately translating. For in the moments that your thoughts are accurately translating, they shall be in harmony with the action function of yourself. They shall be in harmony with the choosing, and in harmony with the choosing, you may be creating an emotional communication of pleasure or acknowledgment of yourself, a feeling of being pleased with yourself and your direction, or of comfort.

In the moments that your thoughts are not accurately translating, or that they are allowing tremendous influence of your beliefs in association with duplicity to be coloring the translation and attempting to alter your choice, you shall present yourself with a communication of discomfort or anxiety or confusion.

In allowing yourself to pay attention to the functions that you have created in this physical dimension of your physical focus, as I have expressed many times previously, you do in actuality offer yourself many avenues to view what you are creating within your reality and how you are creating it. You are not hiding any aspect of your reality from yourself, regardless that it may be expressed subjectively or objectively.

I may express to you, my friend, many of you incorporate much time framework attempting to discover the movement of your subjective awareness, viewing that this, in your associations, shall offer you the key to the question of how you create your reality. I have expressed to you repeatedly, the subjective awareness moves quite in harmony with the objective. Therefore, what you are creating objectively is reflected in what you are creating subjectively. It matters not. In this, you do not pay attention to what you are creating objectively.

SUE: So, if I understand this at all, if I pay attention to what I’m actually feeling and thinking in the moment, then that will lead me to an awareness of what I’m creating?

ELIAS: Quite. But also be incorporating paying attention to what you are CHOOSING, what you are DOING. For many times you may be actually choosing and doing one expression and THINKING another, which shall incorporate an emotional communication to identify what you are creating and what your thoughts are confusing in their translation.

SUE: Right. It sounds like ... I mean, I can see where if I pay attention to how I’m actually acting in the moment ... so you’re talking about how we act, as opposed to how we think we should act or something.

ELIAS: Correct, for what you choose follows your direction. Therefore your choices, your actions, are offering you information concerning your direction.

SUE: Right. So if I were to pay attention to how I actually act, for example, when I’m around men, that would give me more information about what I’m choosing?

ELIAS: And it shall offer you a clearer understanding and identification of your direction in that particular moment or time framework. This is not to say that you are creating an absolute. Your initial questioning was expressed in relation to your intent with an association of an absolute.

SUE: Yes.

ELIAS: ‘I am choosing this movement; therefore this must be the direction of the entirety of my focus.’ Not so! But within any particular time framework or moment, you may be expressing a direction of not creating a particular type of relationship, as an example, for your direction is concerned with a different exploration and action within that time framework. You may THINK you want a particular manifestation within your focus at a particular time, so to speak, and what you THINK you want within that particular time framework may not necessarily be accurately being translated as to the objective want in association with the subjective desire.

But it matters not, for it is not that your subjective desire is directing of the objective manifestation. The objective is in harmony with that desire, and therefore it shall choose actions, movements, that are in alignment with your direction, which is in alignment with your desire in that particular time framework and within any particular moment.

SUE: I guess what’s bothering me is that I’ve been living in this one direction for years, and I’m just afraid it’s never going to change. I feel like I want to change it, and I don’t even know if that’s possible. I don’t know, maybe I don’t really want I’m sorry (laughing), it’s like I’m back to the original question!

ELIAS: Quite! And this is the significance of identifying clearly the translation of what you actually want.

SUE: So maybe what I’ve wanted all this time is something different from what I thought I wanted, or the actual desire is different from what I think.

ELIAS: Correct.

SUE: Well, that sort of makes sense in a way, otherwise I would have manifested it by now. (Both Sue and Elias laugh)

ELIAS: But look to your focus. Those manifestations that you do want in genuineness, you are manifesting!

SUE: Yes, that’s true. That’s clear to me. I think a few years ago I felt trapped in a lot of ways, and now I can see where I’ve created some things in the last couple of years that a lot of people think are difficult, and yet I haven’t had any trouble with them, really. I can see where I can create things when they’re really right for me. Okay, then – I guess I’ll just think about that for a while! (Laughs with Elias) Or not think, but pay attention to things!

ELIAS: Ah! Very well! Ha ha ha!” [session 895, September 03, 2001]

FRANK: “This happened, oh, the first of the month. I had a dream ... well, let me back up and give some background information. I think when we last talked I may have mentioned this, (3) but earlier in August I closed a big deal that should be fairly profitable for me. I had this dream in early September where I dreamt that I was still working at my former employer’s company, and I realized, in this dream at least, that I was going to have to give the money that I expected to make on this new business deal to my former employer. This made me disappointed, and that was about all I can remember from that dream. So my question is, what does that mean?

ELIAS: Offer your impression first.

FRANK: The only thing that I can think of is that in actual objective reality, at least for a period of time, some of the income that I made from this deal I will have to give to other people to repay advances that they made in me. I wish I didn’t have to do that, but I feel that I do and I certainly will, and I think maybe it has some connection with that.

ELIAS: Partially, but also in actuality you have offered this dream imagery to yourself in validation of your accomplishment. For this offers you the identification of what you had been creating previously in allowing yourself to be directed by other individuals, and the recognition of your accomplishment now that you are allowing yourself to be directing of yourself, and therefore you, in a manner of speaking, reap the benefits of your choices rather than offering that creation to other individuals.

FRANK: Yes, I can see that. Why didn’t I think of that? Because it’s interesting, had I stayed where I was in terms of my employment – as you may recall, we discussed this way back then – that’s probably exactly the way I was feeling.

ELIAS: Quite.

FRANK: Okay, interesting. I think the answer to this is probably no, but I’ll ask this question anyway. Was that possibly a view of a different probability?

ELIAS: Yes.

... As you are aware, you have offered yourself the recognition through dream imagery that you have created a probable reality in association with your choice to be discontinuing your previous employment and your choice to be creating your own business presently. In that choice, you created a probable reality in which a probable you continues in the former business.

FRANK: Oh boy. So I could sort of view what happened with that guy?

ELIAS: If you are choosing, yes.

FRANK: That would be fun to know. What do I do?

ELIAS: (Laughs) Allow yourself to view!

FRANK: (Laughing) Okay! Well, that’s pretty interesting. Let’s go on to another thing here.

ELIAS: In actuality, my friend, allow yourself in this moment to recall the first dream imagery that you offered to myself this day and your recognition.

FRANK: Well, there he is! There I am!

ELIAS: Yes. (Chuckling)

FRANK: Oh wow, interesting. Of course, I knew that at the time, too.

ELIAS: Quite!

FRANK: Which I guess gets back to all the things you’ve been telling all of us about choices and recognizing choices.

ELIAS: And paying attention.

FRANK: Yeah, and paying attention. Boy, there it is. Because really, it’s not so surprising. I mean, in fact, very predictable.

ELIAS: Quite!

FRANK: Quite an adventure.

ELIAS: This offers you a clear example of what I expressed to you, that if you are paying attention to this doing and choosing aspect of yourself, you begin recognition that your direction and what you are creating is NOT in actuality hidden from you. It is, in actuality, quite clear and obvious. It is merely a question of directing your attention...

FRANK: Right, which is so hard for us to do.

ELIAS: Quite, for it is quite unfamiliar. You have quite strongly created a definition of attention which is incorrect, associating your attention with thought, and in this you are unfamiliar with what your attention actually is and how to be directing of it and moving it in different directions.

FRANK: Would you like to talk about that a little bit?

ELIAS: As I have stated previously, it may be expressed in the most easily identified manner by allowing yourselves to notice and recognize in the moment what you are actually CHOOSING rather than what you are thinking, for these are both objective obvious actions that you all incorporate. This shall allow you the opportunity to distinguish that your attention is not your thoughts.

FRANK: Let me stop you. When you say by noticing and recognizing what I’m choosing, would that be another way of saying recognizing and noticing what’s actually happening?

ELIAS: Yes! What you are actually DOING.

FRANK: What I’m experiencing.

ELIAS: Correct, rather than what you THINK you are experiencing. For there is a difference, my friend. Many times you are doing and choosing, and your thoughts shall be in alignment and translating accurately. But many times you think you are doing or choosing a particular action and in actuality what you are doing and choosing may be different.

Therefore, if you allow yourself to begin noticing precisely what you are actually doing in any particular moment, you shall also in that moment recognize the difference between thought and attention, for you shall experience an actual movement of your attention to the choice, and in that movement the thoughts shall appear to you to be recessive, in a manner of speaking. They shall move to the background, so to speak, of your picture, and the choice shall become the subject matter of your picture, in a manner of speaking. This shall become obvious to you in the moments that you allow yourself to shift your attention.

This shall offer you a clearer understanding of the distinction between attention and thought. This is not to say that your thoughts shall cease, but in a manner of speaking they may become similar to the rhythm or the background sounds within a musical piece. They continue, but they are not the prominent notes.

FRANK: Right, you’re aware of it but there are other aspects that are more in your...

ELIAS: You are paying attention to the action, not the thought of the action.

FRANK: Thank you, that’s something to ponder.” (Elias chuckles) [session 908, September 25, 2001]

LORRAINE: “I know I’m not supposed to compare myself with everybody else in this forum, but I don’t know, I don’t seem what’s the word, I know you know what I’m thinking; let’s see. I don’t seem to be getting in touch with any other focuses, not that I have any interest in that actually, but when I try to sort of do a little meditation and get quiet and try to get in touch with anything, I don’t ever get in touch with anything! (Laughing) I don’t seem do you know what I’m saying?

ELIAS: Which also matters not, my friend. This is the choice of each individual. Although I may express to individuals that it may be beneficial to allow themselves to be viewing other focuses of themselves, it is not necessary and it is the choice of each individual.

Some individuals may be allowing themselves a greater understanding and recognition of the vastness of themselves if they are allowing themselves to view other focuses. Some individuals do not generate, as you have stated, interest in this type of action. This is not to say that you may not offer yourself an understanding and recognition of yourself as essence without viewing other focuses. This is merely a choice, my friend. There are many individuals, yourself also, that choose to be concerning yourself with THIS objective reality, this focus.

LORRAINE: Right. But I also feel that I want to find out more about myself and know myself better, and I guess what I’m not understanding is how to go about doing that. Or what is it, the way that ... I don’t know. Am I choosing a way? Am I doing it? I don’t feel that I am, but...

ELIAS: The manner in which you may be allowing yourself more of a familiarity with self and an objective recognition and intimate relationship with self, not necessarily incorporating viewing other focuses of yourself, may be expressed in turning your attention.

Now; what I am expressing in this is as you turn your attention to the acting aspect of yourself, that aspect of yourself which chooses, that aspect of yourself that creates the DOING within your focus, you may be offering yourself clearer information concerning your direction, which shall also offer you information concerning your intent. But this movement of your attention to the aspect of yourself that incorporates action and choosing shall also allow you a clearer distinction of what you want and what you think you want. It also shall offer you information concerning what you are actually creating, rather than what you think you are creating in holding your attention upon the mechanism of your thoughts.

Let me express to you my friend, as I have recently with many other individuals, attention is not thought. It may be directed to thought, but it itself is not thought.

Therefore, as you discover where your attention is directed, you may also move your attention. You may steer your attention, and allow yourself to pay attention to what you are actually doing and choosing rather than what you are thinking. This is not to say that you shall disengage your thinking or that you shall not involve the incorporation of thought, for you shall; but that your attention is not directed to the thoughts as that which actually creates your reality, for they do not.

This is a manner in which you may familiarize yourself with self more fully and incorporate a greater understanding of not merely what you create within your reality, but how you create it and what direction you are exploring.

LORRAINE: All right, thank you.

ELIAS: You are welcome.” [session 913, September 29, 2001]

KATIE: “This energy exchange with Tom, can I terminate it?

ELIAS: If you are so choosing.

KATIE: How do I go about that?

ELIAS: Familiarizing yourself with YOUR energy, recognizing that all that you participate within you create; therefore, it is YOUR choice of whether you shall continue to create it or not. As I have expressed previously, it matters not what other individuals choose. For in relation to your reality, whatever is being expressed within your awareness within your reality is a creation of your perception. Therefore, you are choosing to be creating this action.

This also moves in conjunction with what we have been discussing this morning concerning paying attention to what you are choosing and doing. For many times, although not always, individuals, and yourself also, engage thought processes in which you think you want to be creating one expression and in actuality you choose a different expression. And many times this creates confusion in the individual, for your automatic response is to express to yourself why: why am I creating this expression and I want this other expression? But the identification of the want is expressed in translation of thought. Therefore you THINK that you want one expression, but you actually create another. This is what I have been expressing to you, which offers you a clearer understanding of your direction and your movement in paying attention to what you actually do and choose.

Now; in this, as you allow yourself to pay attention to what you are actually doing and choosing, you also offer yourself information concerning the reasons that you are choosing specific actions.

Now; if you are wishing to be disengaging a particular action in relation to another individual, the first movement that you may incorporate with your attention is to turn your attention to self and allow yourself the recognition that you are creating ALL of this expression, all of this interaction. Therefore, the discontinuation of it is not dependent upon the choices of the other individual. It is not a situation in which you must be or need be incorporating an action such as buffering. (4) Are you understanding thus far?

KATIE: Yes.

ELIAS: For the other individual may be projecting energy and you may be receiving of that energy, and it matters not. For what is being manifest in relation to the energy is YOUR creation.

Now; if you are so choosing, you may be incorporating a buffer in which you allow the energy expression of another individual to approach yourself, but you also create an action in which you reflect it away and do not allow a penetration. But what I am expressing to you beyond that action is that in actuality, how you configure that energy as you receive it is your choice and your manifestation.

Therefore, if you are wishing to be discontinuing, you may merely choose to not create that projection of energy, not create your manifestation of it, your perception of it. Move your attention and allow yourself to focus your attention in a different expression.

KATIE: Let me ask you this. Am I continuing to choose to participate in that energy exchange?

ELIAS: In this present now, answer this question to myself. This is an opportunity to pay attention to what you are choosing and doing in the moment, in the now. Therefore, what is your response to your question in this present now?

KATIE: I think right now I’m just buffering.

ELIAS: Correct. And in each moment you may inquire of yourself, in like manner to this moment, what are you choosing and doing? Not what are you thinking – what are you actually choosing and doing in the moment?

For in inquiring this of yourself, you identify what you are choosing and what you are doing, and in identifying that, you offer yourself more choices, for you incorporate the freedom in any moment to choose differently from what you may have chosen in the moment prior.

KATIE: But how do I choose differently if thought doesn’t have anything to do with it? (Laughing)

ELIAS: Thought is not choosing.

KATIE: I just don’t get that part. I mean, I understand what you are saying in concept, but not in practical terms.

ELIAS: By paying attention to this choosing/doing aspect of yourself.

I am not expressing to you to not think, for thinking is a translating mechanism and therefore it is moving and generating thoughts almost continuously – not entirely continuously. But what I am expressing to you is that thought is not generating your reality, it is not creating your reality, it is translating. And in this, thought does not always translate accurately.

Therefore if you are moving your attention to what you are choosing and what you are doing, you also offer yourself clearer communication to thought, which allows your thinking to more accurately and clearly translate objectively to you. And in this action, merely the identification of what you are choosing offers you more of a freedom in recognizing that you are not bound to one choice.

If you are not recognizing what you are choosing, how shall you offer yourself objectively the ability to intentionally choose otherwise?

KATIE: Well, I understand that part, and I recognize that I am choosing that energy exchange and that in my thoughts I want something different. I’m wishing to discontinue it.

ELIAS: Very well, and what I am expressing to you is, the manner in which you may engage this action is to pay attention as you are choosing it, and therefore allow yourself to stop in the moment.

I may express to you my friend, as you practice with this movement of attention this shall become much more familiar and be expressed much more easily.

KATIE: I sure hope so. (Both laugh)

ELIAS: It is...

KATIE: ‘Cause right now it’s just pretty darn confusing.

ELIAS: It is merely unfamiliar presently, but I may assure you that this particular action requires, in your terms, little practice to become familiar. This is not as difficult as you perceive it to be presently. (Chuckles)

KATIE: It’s like there’s just this one little hitch that I just don’t quite get.

ELIAS: Which is?

KATIE: Well, if I knew what it was...! (Both laugh)

ELIAS: Ah, searching to discover the missing piece! (Chuckles) I may express to you, the missing piece, so to speak, is the identification of what attention is.

KATIE: Okay, what is attention?

ELIAS: Attention. HA HA HA HA HA!

KATIE: Oh, fine! (Laughing)

ELIAS: It is your allowance of yourself to direct your awareness to specific actions that you are incorporating. For the most part you, in like manner to most individuals within your physical dimension, concentrate your attention upon thought.

Now; in concentrating your attention upon thought, you offer little aspects of attention to actual communications that you incorporate within yourself. Therefore, as thought is a translating mechanism, it does not function accurately many times if it is not being offered information through communication. The manner in which you offer thought the communication to be accurately translating is to move your attention to the communications.

In a manner of speaking, I may express to you, you may view your thoughts as a type of processing machine, so to speak.

Now; you have incorporated information previously from other essences that thought is reality; very well, just as the machine is a reality.

Now; this machine that you may incorporate physically requires an input of information, and in offering it an input of information, its function is to translate that information. Let us say that you incorporate many, many, many volumes of coded text, so to speak, and you incorporate an action of feeding this text into this machine, and what the machine incorporates as function is to be translating these volumes of text into pictures, so to speak, that you may understand in an objective viewing of them.

Thought works in a very similar manner. It incorporates information and translates that information objectively. BUT it does not precede or create or generate your reality. It translates it.

Therefore, if you are not offering information through your attention to your thought process, it may translate what is familiar to it. It may translate in relation to your beliefs and familiar information that it already incorporates, rather than accurately translating what you may be actually incorporating in movement in the moment. Are you understanding?

KATIE: Yes.

ELIAS: For it draws upon the information that it is offered, and if your attention is not being directed to communications or choices, you are also not offering that to your thought mechanisms. In a manner of speaking, you are offering to the machine blank pages, and therefore it has little information to translate. Therefore it translates what it already associates with and what is familiar, what it already knows. But that may not necessarily be what your movement is in the moment.” [session 920, October 09, 2001]

SHERRY: “Gosh, things have been moving so fast, I haven’t even thought a whole lot about this. Basically I just want to check in with you because, like I said, I’m at these crossroads. I mean, I’m understanding more and more about giving myself permission to create what I want to create.

ELIAS: Yes?

SHERRY: But then again it’s a little overwhelming because the energy seems to be running so fast.

ELIAS: (Chuckles) Yes?

SHERRY: Oh, yes? (Laughing)

ELIAS: It IS accelerating.

SHERRY: Pardon me?

ELIAS: It IS accelerating. You are all collectively accelerating the movement of energy and even your expression of time.

SHERRY: That’s another thing. It’s like I don’t have time to do everything that I would like, and so I’m kind of just letting things fall away or just focusing on what I want to create.

ELIAS: And let me express to you, my friend, this also is purposeful, for it offers you an even clearer opportunity to hold your attention in the now, for the now is moving quickly. Therefore, in this you have provided yourself with a motivation to be focusing your attention within the now and not distracting yourself with other expressions, projecting yourself futurely or pastly.

SHERRY: So I’m understanding this, and I’ve been trying to look at myself, trying to figure out what’s going on with me and the dolphins, I mean, or beliefs. Because at one point I went ahead and gave myself permission to look at tickets, and I found one for $289 but I didn’t know if I had enough money to do that. Well, then, the last two nights I wanted to read my email and see if I heard from a couple of people or whatever, making sure that I could talk to you, and then it got late and I was tired and I went to bed – so I was trying to say, if I really trusted myself I would have gone back online and gotten the ticket before talking to you. But it’s kind of like, I don’t know, some part of me wanted to talk to you first because ... and the reason I know that is because I didn’t do it.

ELIAS: Very well. And what is your concern?

SHERRY: I don’t know if there’s a concern. Well, I guess there must be some doubt somewhere, or just wanting to make sure that that is my most efficient thing to do. Because it feels like it, yes, but then there was that part of me that didn’t do it. I’m not understanding why I didn’t do it – or, I know, because I’m waiting.

The other thing is I called about that thing with the state, and the judge says that he’s gonna give an answer this week. It’s kind of weird, because it was like I’d already created going to Belize before I heard back from the judge. I just decided, nope, I’m just going. If I believe he’ll come through and it’ll be what I created it to be in terms of that – yes, they’re going to give me back my license or whatever – then I’ll come back and do the other part, getting reimbursed for when they took it away when they didn’t have legal rights to take it away.

I want to understand what the message is or what the communication with me and the dolphins is. So therefore, it was like that was becoming more important to me to go do it, because there’s some connection I have about needing to find out what that is.

ELIAS: Very well.

SHERRY: Does that make sense? I seem like I’m rambling in a thousand directions. (Laughing)

ELIAS: I am understanding what you are expressing. You are incorporating several different directions simultaneously, but I may also express to you that I am understanding your confusion, and in this you are also offering yourself examples of what we have discussed previously.

Now; you have been paying attention and allowing yourself to assimilate what we have discussed in relation to experience, and as you allow yourself to be experiencing certain concepts, this allows you objectively to more clearly move the concepts into reality.

In this, I have expressed to you to be paying attention to what you are choosing rather than what you THINK you want, and this is what you are experiencing now. You have been offering yourself a noticing that what you are choosing is not always what you are thinking, and you are noticing the difference. But in that noticing, you are also allowing yourself to accept what you are choosing. Are you understanding?

SHERRY: Yes. So I’m not so conflicted inside myself; I’m more in harmony.

ELIAS: Correct! For in this, as you have noticed also within yourself individually, as you pay attention to what you are actually choosing and doing in the moment, it matters not that you may be thinking something different. For in this recognition, you allow yourself the acceptance of what you are choosing in the moment, AND you also automatically offer yourself a recognition of more choices.

Now; how have you recognized that you incorporate more choices? For as you pay attention to what you are choosing, what you are doing in the moment, if it does not coincide with your thinking, you allow yourself to broaden, in a manner of speaking, your thinking process. For your attention is focused upon avenues of communication, rather than focusing almost entirely upon the thought mechanism. Therefore you offer more information to the thought mechanism, which translates, and in this, miraculously other thoughts occur to you. Other choices become clearer. It becomes less black-and-white and absolute.

In your example of your choice to be incorporating interaction with these dolphins, initially you move into a thought process expressing to yourself – with partial information to be translated – an association that expresses to you you must be incorporating a certain action within a certain time framework – black/white, absolute. But you also are paying attention to what you are choosing in the moment, which offers information to your thought mechanism, your thought process, in which you become aware objectively that you may incorporate more choices than merely this one or the absolute, black and white.

Now; those choices may not objectively be recognized immediately in identification of what they all are, but you do incorporate a knowing that there are other choices available. Therefore you relax, and you allow yourself to allow yourself. You allow yourself the expression of relaxing and patience which, as I have stated, patience is an action of allowing. And this is what you incorporate, the allowance for you to interpret and translate objectively what your choices are, allowing yourself to relax within your own energy, reinforce and validate your expression of trust of yourself, and therefore incorporate an objective allowance to view and recognize that your choices in actuality are not limited.

It matters not your perception of time and how quickly it may be moving, or how quickly energy may be moving. You continue to incorporate enough energy, enough time to create whatever you choose, and you may be creating ALL that you choose.

You also offer yourself, in what you have identified to myself, a recognition of your own validation of trust in not concentrating your thought processes or your energy in concern or worry in relation to other individuals and what they may be expressing or choosing. You are allowing yourself to move into a genuine recognition that their expressions matter not. YOU are creating what you want; therefore, you are creating the decisions of the court. Are you understanding?

SHERRY: Yes, I really am. I mean, it still feels kind of unfamiliar or different...

ELIAS: Yes.

SHERRY: ...so that part is a little uncomfortable. But the other part, there’s a real exhilaration that oh, yes, yes, it’s finally getting here, I’m getting it, I know I’m getting it!

ELIAS: For you are allowing yourself to pay attention to you.

SHERRY: So there’s parts ... like I was sitting there last night saying, ‘Okay, I’m creating this license to come back.’ It’s kind of like I have this step-by-step thing going on, whatever that means.

But there are some things I just know, know, know, and I guess that’s because some things I know like 100 percent, it feels like. Then there’s other things that I’m pretty sure but I’m not 100 percent, so there’s a difference about that. That’s the part I’m not sure ... it feels to me like there’s a part of me that’s still thinking that outside of me is in control. Whereas some things I can give myself permission to do at 100 percent, but other things there is such a strong belief that it feels like I haven’t got ... I still have residual things going on.

ELIAS: Yes, I am understanding. Be remembering my friend, you are incorporating a process. These beliefs are expressed en masse and they hold great strength, and there is a tremendous familiarity in association with your beliefs. Therefore you are allowing yourself, in your terms, great strides so to speak in trust of yourself.

But in that movement, merely allow yourself to recognize that in some expressions, yes, you do continue to incorporate some doubt and you do continue to incorporate some expressions of suspicion, so to speak, of the possibility that some expressions may be created outside of yourself and you are not generating them. And in that recognition, be aware of yourself and your expression that you do not move yourself into expectations concerning yourself, for this creates another discounting of yourself. Rather, merely recognize the moments in which you may be incorporating doubt and acknowledge yourself; for this is an opportunity to practice, rather than discounting yourself by projecting expectations upon yourself in relation to what you SHOULD be incorporating or what you should be stopping or what you should NOT be incorporating. Be remembering, the point is trust and acceptance.” [session 921, October 10, 2001]

PAUL T: “Ah, hark back to my very first session – let’s talk about motivations and that meeting of essence that I had in Regional Area 3 or wherever it was. (5) We talked about motivation and how that sort of meeting of essence lends so much energy to this focus and that sort of thing.

In the past couple, three months and especially in the last couple of weeks, I have felt the absence of that motivation. As a matter of fact, I have been chalking it up to transition, but a couple of weeks ago it was like ... I felt like I was seriously considering the option of disengagement of physical focus. It was like, ‘Oh, this is becoming so tedious.’

I have a few thoughts on that that I would like your comments on. It has to do with I have somehow lost that connection or that knowing of essence, and how that translates into sort of a meandering or wandering of energy that I can’t seem to direct in the manner in which I am so choosing. (Sighs)

I sure wish I could say, ‘Give me a method on how to do this,’ but I know you won’t do that (Elias chuckles), so just some thoughts. I’m kind of at a loss for what direction I’m headed here in terms of this lack of motivation.

ELIAS: And your assessment and your impression?

PAUL T: Is ... I’m sorry, go ahead. (Elias nods for Paul to continue) Ah, okay. It is a disassociation with that conscious awareness of the fact that I am essence and it is more focusing outward as opposed to focusing inward on that connection.

ELIAS: And your impression concerning what this is an indication of? (Pause)

PAUL T: Well, the thing which occurred to me within the last week was paying attention more to the now and that perhaps my attention was being placed futurely and pastly, and not staying in the now and noticing what’s going on around me. The information that you were talking about with Zacharie [Rodney] on Saturday (6) also helped me to make some connections between that inner connection and the knowing of my worth, independent of anything that I do, say, or anything else, and how that is connected to the concept of service, that service has been presented to me as a way out of this feeling of lack of motivation, of non-worth. I recognize that the capacity to be of service to others is derived from that sense of self-worth, knowing that my worth is not derived from anything else other than the fact that I merely am.

ELIAS: Very well. I may express to you that your assessment of the situation is accurate and your impression concerning what you are presenting to yourself is also accurate. For in this lack of motivation you are expressing to yourself a type of floundering, for you have presented to yourself a particular direction that you associate with spirituality.

PAUL T: Ah!

ELIAS: In actuality, the expression of spirituality is all of you and all that you manifest. That which you direct your attention within in this physical dimension and physical manifestation is no less of an expression of spirituality. But within the expressed beliefs, the direction is to be seeking out beyond this physical expression to gain the true nature of spirituality, which is quite incorrect. This is seeking out a greater expression of yourself and expressing to yourself that you are seeking it out inwardly when in actuality you are seeking it out outwardly, for it is deemed to be an entity that is greater than yourself and outside of yourself, not incorporated within this physical manifestation but beyond this physical manifestation.

Now as you turn your attention and you move to not be generating that association with that experience, moving your attention more to the now, you present to yourself this experience of floundering, so to speak, for there is confusion in what you shall place your attention upon.

PAUL T: Aye, there be the rub!

ELIAS: And this is the subject matter that we spoke of in that group forum, moving into a direction of genuinely focusing your attention upon self in the now, in the moment, and not projecting your attention futurely or pastly in relation to experiences and associations with those experiences, and directing of yourself rather than moving your attention outside of yourself and looking to another force of energy to be directing of you...

PAUL T: Yes.

ELIAS: ...even though you view that other force of energy intellectually to be you, but not.

PAUL T: Indeed, and that has been the crux of my floundering, because my memory of that experience is something outside of myself. Intellectually I can say, ‘This IS me,’ but it’s the difference of how to take that experience and to know that that is me.

ELIAS: And the manner in which you accomplish this is to genuinely focus your attention upon you.

PAUL T: In the now.

ELIAS: In the now, in the moment. And the manner in which you accomplish that is to be moving your attention to your choices, to what you actually choose, what you do.

PAUL T: Paying attention to where my attention is.

ELIAS: Yes, and what you are generating in the moment.

PAUL T: And how I am generating it.

ELIAS: Correct. And this is the nature of the exploration.

PAUL T: Oh, I do believe that is about as close to a method, I think, as I will ever get out of you! (Elias chuckles) All right.

ELIAS: As I have stated, my friend, this is an unfamiliar action. Therefore, the expression of a lack of motivation is quite commonly expressed, and the interpretation in singularity and absolutes and black and white, which is quite familiar to you all, of expressing to yourself the questioning whether this is a signal that you are choosing to be disengaging, is also quite commonly expressed.

But your expressions within objective reality, as I continue to reiterate, are quite abstract and not black and white. This is merely your automatic association: ‘I am unmotivated; therefore I must be choosing to be disengaging.’

PAUL T: Ah! (Elias chuckles) Quite incorrect.

PAUL H: Can I just offer a comment on what you two have been discussing? Yesterday Mary talked to the group about her own choices and thinking and feeling, and you mentioned choice again in the context of what you were just talking about. Paul used the word ‘method’ and it dawned on me, in information you’ve offered before you’ve talked a lot about belief systems, accepting self, accepting others, accepting self. You talked about noticing, identifying, recognizing, addressing to, and acceptance, and this is really a continuation and expansion of the same process.

ELIAS: Correct.

PAUL H: Directing attention to self is also part of this process, moving into addressing to and accepting. You have offered methods and other things too, exercises and things that draw the attention to self...

ELIAS: You are correct.

PAUL H: ...that are available. So I just wanted to throw that out. (7)

ELIAS: There are many methods; there are many processes. It matters not what you choose as a process or a method to be directing your attention. What holds significance is that you recognize your attention and that you recognize that you do hold the ability to manipulate it and move it, that it is not anchored in one direction.

PAUL T: Quite unfamiliar.

PAUL H: So by looking at choices, in another way we’re looking at the beliefs that are there, because they are behind, they’re filtering. Every choice has a belief behind it...

ELIAS: Correct.

PAUL H: ...just about. There must be an exception to that, but in general.

ELIAS: In a manner of speaking. You choose to be in alignment with a belief or not.

PAUL H: Right, which is separate yet linked, but separate from the thought process that you’ve been talking about.

ELIAS: Correct. And in this, the point, as you are aware, is not to be changing beliefs, although this is an automatic response in association. But how may you change beliefs if you incorporate them all? What shall you change them to? And you may not eliminate them, for they are intrinsic to the design of this physical dimension. Therefore if you are choosing to continue to be physically manifest, you are also choosing to be creating within the physical design of this dimension, which incorporates beliefs.

Therefore, your direction is the acceptance of them, and what is the acceptance or what is the method of acceptance of the beliefs but to recognize their existence, not generate judgment concerning their existence, and offer yourselves choice, knowing that the belief is expressed but that you are not subject to it. You may align with it, and this is neither good or bad. Or you may choose not to align with it.

I may express to you an example of this method, which I have expressed to other individuals also. Choose any belief.

PAUL T: Religious.

ELIAS: This is a belief system. Choose one expression of any belief.

PAUL T: That I must be incorporating physical motion to move a physical object.

ELIAS: Very well.

Now; visualize the belief as an object, as an entity in itself, and this object, this belief, is set directly before you. This is the belief which concerns your ability to be creating an action or not.

Now; you also may incorporate the visualization that beside this belief is another physical object, which is the object that you wish to move without physical contact.

Now; you view this belief. As you acknowledge its existence, you are not attempting to eliminate it, you are not attempting to reconfigure it into some other shape, but merely noticing and recognizing that it exists.

Now; if you choose to pick up this object, this belief, you choose to comply with it. Therefore, as you direct your attention to the physical-matter object that you wish to move without physical contact, you shall not accomplish, for you have chosen to pick up and align with the expression of this belief that you may not move an object without physical contact.

If you choose NOT to pick up this object of this belief, you may offer yourself the choice to move the physical object without contact, for you are not choosing to align with the expression of that belief. In that action, you acknowledge the existence of the belief but you recognize that it does not control or dictate to you your movement or your choices. It does not incorporate that power. This is the neutralization of the power of the belief and returning the power of action to you, returning the power of choice to yourself rather than projecting the power to the belief.

Automatic responses are the action of transferring that power to the object of the belief rather than allowing yourself the power of choice. The belief continues to exist, but in itself it does not create your choices or your reality.

PAUL T: So therefore one of my major tasks is being able to identify all of the objects that are in front of me, all the beliefs that are in front of me.

ELIAS: Correct, and once recognizing...

PAUL T: Then I have the choice to either leave it on the table or pick it up.

ELIAS: Correct.

PAUL T: Wow.

PAUL H: So the neutralization is like the latency, then. It is the potential for the belief to create action. It becomes latent in this neutralization of it. It still exists...

ELIAS: In a manner of speaking, yes.

PAUL H: ...so it’s a state shift, as best as I can conceptualize it.

ELIAS: In a manner of speaking, yes.

PAUL H: It becomes latent. It’s not ... are you bypassing it?

ELIAS: No. You are offering yourself choice. You are recognizing that you incorporate choice, and therefore whether you choose to pick up the belief or not, matters not. It is your choice in the moment. One is not better or worse than the other. The power lies in the choice.

PAUL H: And this action of choice can occur with thought process, but also without thought process.

ELIAS: Correct, for the thought process, as I have stated, continues regardless, in like manner to your heartbeat. It is merely a matter of whether you are directing your attention to it or not. It does not create your reality; it does not set your direction. It interprets and translates, in objective manner, what you are generating, for this is its function.

If you are paying attention to you in your entirety, you may allow yourself to incorporate all of these aspects of yourself simultaneously, harmoniously.

PAUL H: Is one way of saying that ‘becoming aware of the thinker of the thought, of the dreamer of the dream’?

ELIAS: In a manner of speaking.

PAUL H: In a manner of speaking, source identity.

ELIAS: Yes, incorporating allowance of your attention and to be aware of your communications, of your choice and of your thoughts simultaneously, which you quite efficiently hold the ability to be incorporating. You are merely familiar with moving your attention in certain expressions singularly. But you are also familiar with incorporating many actions in your attention simultaneously. You merely do not associate this with self, inwardly.

You are quite efficient at projecting your attention outwardly and occupying your attention with many expressions and directions simultaneously outside of yourself. You are unfamiliar with the action of incorporating your attention in many expressions simultaneously within yourself.

PAUL H: And this would lead us to the inner senses and engaging them more fully while in waking state?

ELIAS: If you are so choosing, yes, allowing yourself to be aware objectively of what you are generating and what you want, and in what you want, incorporating your abilities to generate that want. Be it through expressions of inner senses, outer senses, physical actions – it matters not, but offering yourself the genuine knowing of your abilities and permission to express them. For I may express to you all, my friends, even within the moment that you may offer yourself a genuine knowing of your abilities, you may not necessarily offer yourself permission to express them.

PAUL T: So I can turn that permission to myself into another object to lay on the table.

ELIAS: Correct.

PAUL T: Ah! This could be very interesting.

ELIAS: Let me express to you, you fascinate yourselves with the expression of your abilities in outward experiences and manifestations, but you also generate fear in relation to these types of actions. For the mere action that many individuals seek so intensely, of moving a physical object without contact, may generate quite an expression of fear merely in the recognition of your own power and how powerful you actually are.

PAUL H: I totally understand that, because in some of my own experiences ... you freak yourself out and you pull back. Giving permission allows that opening and...

ELIAS: Quite.

PAUL H: ...becoming familiar with the action.

ELIAS: Quite.

PAUL H: That’s a big step.

ELIAS: And if you are so very powerful you also present to yourself the fear that you shall frighten other individuals with this great expression of power.

PAUL H: Right, that’s very much a part of my perception with other events that have happened to me, becoming a freak. ‘What will others think of me?’ (8)

ELIAS: Generally speaking, individuals within your dimension do align with this belief concerning themselves with the perceptions of other individuals, and the reason that this is expressed so generally is that you incorporate this judgment within self and you reflect it outwardly in association with other individuals. Genuinely you do not fear the perception of other individuals; you fear your own perceptions of yourselves and your own judgments of yourselves, and this is what you reflect.” [session 991, January 21, 2002]

TERRY: “Well, Elias, a lot of things have been happening in my life, a lot of uncertainty, and that’s sort of why I’m here. I just wanted to understand a little bit about what my opportunities are. I have my own business; I want to know whether my business will continue to be successful. I have aspirations for a baby. Then I have a husband that I’m just getting divorced from but I still love very much, and I want to know what my connection with him is. A lot of questions! (Laughter) ...

ELIAS: Very well, express to myself the nature of your concern in relation to your confusion.

TERRY: I think it’s not so much confusion as it is uncertainty about all of those things.

ELIAS: Uncertainty is incorporated in moments in which you are not listening to yourself. Uncertainty and clarity may be easily identified and altered merely in the action of paying attention to you and what you are generating – not what you are thinking but what you are actually generating, what you are doing. In this, individuals are quite unfamiliar with turning their attention to other aspects of themselves other than the thinking mechanism of themselves.

Now; this is not to say that you may not pay attention to what you are thinking, for thinking is a mechanism that is continuously moving and generating whether you are paying attention to it or not. Therefore, it is not a matter of disengaging your thought processes but allowing yourself to move your attention to other movements of yourself, communications and choices.

Now; in relation to your business, the manner in which you generate clarity as to what you are creating, what you are generating, is to be paying attention to your communications to yourself. You communicate to yourself through impressions, through impulses. Emotion is a very clear communication that individuals offer to themselves.

As I have expressed many times and shall continue to clarify, emotion is not a reaction. Emotion is NEVER a reaction. It is always a communication from your subjective awareness to your objective awareness. Therefore, in not merely paying attention to the signal or the feeling but allowing yourself to recognize what the communication is in emotion, you may more clearly identify the direction in which you are moving.

Paying attention in the now to what you are choosing is quite significant and offers you a tremendous expression of information.

Now; individuals may identify what they are doing, but this is not to say that you recognize that what you are doing you are also choosing. You may express to yourself,