duplicity game 
WENDY: “You always talk to us like we can just change things. We could change them immediately if we would just get it. (Elias laughs) That’s why I feel frustrated! I feel like if I could just get this, I wouldn’t have to keep thrashing around like a fish on a hook!
ELIAS: Ha ha ha! Let me express to you, you express a frustration very similar to many other individuals, and I may express to you that this is quite common and eventually, in your terms, you do get it.
WENDY: (Laughs) Is it before I die?
ELIAS: Yes! (Laughing)
WENDY: Just before I die, I go, ‘Oh wait, I see! I remember!’
ELIAS: Perhaps much sooner than that!
WENDY: Oh, I hope so.
ELIAS: You present yourselves with moments somewhat frequently in which you do get it. Perhaps not all of the concepts or all of the directions simultaneously, but in increments, you do.
WENDY: I have times when I just feel so expansively exhilarated and clear about all this. When I read Seth back in 1976, when I first read The Nature of Personal Reality, it was like a door had opened. It seemed so clear and it seemed so doable, and yet on a daily basis, on a point-by-point basis, it just seems like I muddy it all up.
ELIAS: Perhaps if you offer yourself an ‘aha’ moment and do not discount that and allow yourself to be more gentle with yourself, you may be generating many more of those ‘aha’ moments.
WENDY: This whole thing about being harshly judgmental, I’ve been doing it all my life. I’ve made a career out of it. I can stop it periodically and kind of get off that, but it seems like that’s just where I go, pushing myself.
ELIAS: Then reward yourself each time you engage that action.
WENDY: How do you mean? Get a little something nice to eat, go sit in the sunshine?
ELIAS: Offer yourself a point. Each time you generate that action, offer yourself a point. Generate a game and reward yourself.
WENDY: Are we talking about rewarding myself for being harsh?
ELIAS: Yes! Yes.
WENDY: So in the duplicity game, I could turn that into that’s what I’m trying to achieve is ultimate harsh judgment of myself. I could make it really hard for myself to even do it. (Elias laughs) Yeah, I’d get tired of that real fast. Yes, that’s very clever. You know what that’s called in psychological terms, they call that paradoxical therapy. Instead of trying to struggle against something, you go in the direction of it.
ELIAS: Yes, and reward yourself for it. For in this, you also affect your perception, for you begin to recognize the humor in what you are doing.
WENDY: Here’s another one, here’s another one of my favorite ones. Harsh judgment of myself, but the other one is a deep-seated conviction that there’s something wrong with me that affects all my interactions with every person eventually. In other words, even if I think things are going well, there’s something wrong with me that’s going to screw things up.
ELIAS: (Humorously) Ah, even better! This shall be genuinely fun. Now you may TRULY be harsh with yourself and you may be evaluating all of the nasty, bad qualities that you incorporate and all of the nasty behaviors that you express, and you may generate yourself to be the most evil individual upon the planet!
WENDY: (Laughing) I’m not even that good! I’m not good enough to be the worst. I’m not even powerful enough to be powerfully bad; I’m just kind of weakly bad.
ELIAS: Ah, weakly bad is good, too. (Laughs) Weakness is another bad, bad expression.
WENDY: Oh, yes, I really do feel bad about being so weak!
ELIAS: Ah, I express to you that you may play this game and generate extreme weaknesses and offer yourself chocolates for every weakness that you view.
WENDY: Next time you talk to me I’ll be a little heavier than I am today, and that will be bad, too.
ELIAS: (Laughs) And you may also enhance that, and perhaps be bad and a lush, also!
WENDY: What was that again?
ELIAS: You may incorporate being a lush, also, and you may incorporate rewarding yourself with a glass of wine.
WENDY: A glass of wine? Oh good, I’ll be a plump alcoholic.” (Elias laughs) [session 1440, September 22, 2003]
Digests – see also: | duplicity | perception |
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