Saturday, January 29, 2011 (Private/Phone)

Participants: Mary (Michael) and Anon

ELIAS: Good afternoon!

ANON: (Somewhat wearily) Good afternoon. (Elias chuckles) Glad to talk to you again.

ELIAS: And you also. And how have your experiments and your exercises been proceeding?

ANON: Okay. Well, before I ask about that, can I just ask that we save a few minutes at the end, at least, so that I can talk about my cat?

ELIAS: Yes!

ANON: Okay. So, right now going into what we’re going to talk about: First of all, I got the audio a couple of days ago, and I’m not exactly certain that I’ve understood it, specifically the last step. What I want to do is check with you if I’ve understood.

This is what I’m thinking here, that I feel unsafe because it’s my experience that being different is bad and that there are bad consequences to being this way. For example, the difficult relationship I had with my mother, or with my in-laws and others, where it seemed I didn’t fit in because, for example, I didn’t spend my whole life in that country and so was exposed to different cultural influences, which was unconventional.

Other consequences have been financial ones, in choosing careers that are not as highly regarded and commercial and are therefore not as well paid, or even choosing not to work at all, and so you pay with less income as a price.

It often seems that the costs of being different outweigh the benefits, but at the same time I can’t really understand why it should be so, but it has been, in my experience. And that makes me upset and anxious, that I don’t really understand why other people see things the way they do and that I feel literally worth less or less valuable, and that threatens my sense of belonging in this world. (Emotionally) And that I feel like a freak sometimes and that I have to hide this from other people and do “normal” in order to be liked. So that’s what I’m checking with you, if I understood the gist of what you were getting at.

ELIAS: And what would the definition of “normal” be?

ANON: Well, I don’t really know. (Emotionally) I’ve been told different people have different definitions. What was normal for my mother, for example, was not normal – like what she considered to be normal with her native country’s cultural influences and perhaps generational influences, that’s what she considered normal. They were not considered normal where we lived, where people had different attitudes and influences.

And when I was growing up in the ‘70s, there were generational differences. I suppose there always are, between one generation and the next. So that’s the problem: “normal.” If I was doing something that my mother considered normal, it was almost certain that people where we lived didn’t think it was normal, and vice versa. So I don’t know. I really don’t know what “normal” is; I just know that somehow or another it’s just generally not been me.

ELIAS: Very well. If you cannot define “normal” in general, how would you define yourself outside of it?

ANON: Well, I suppose one aspect would be not being outgoing. So “normal,” I suppose, as I might understand it, would entail being more at ease with people and more outgoing. “Normal” might also be… (sighs) Well, having grown up in one place and done the same things as many other people have done, gone to the same schools and known the same people and studied in the same school system as opposed to what I did, which was living in different countries and studying in different school systems and learning in different languages even, and certainly having turnover, generally speaking, of friends because one group would be left in one country, and so on and so forth. So that’s not normal by most people’s standards. Most people haven’t had that experience.

Another not-normal is my parents were from different cultural backgrounds, and that does happen, but it’s more unusual. Usually people have met in the same country, come from the same background, but my mother’s from one country and my father was from a different one, and they met during the war.

And there’s this big age gap between me and my brother, 14 years. That’s not normal; usually there’s more siblings in between or closer in age group. And many things, really, but those would be some examples.

ELIAS: Now, would it be possible for you to exchange this word of “normal” in your experience for more of a definition and an association of “stable”?

ANON: Stable? S-T-A-B-L-E?

ELIAS: Yes.

ANON: Um, how…?

ELIAS: That rather than expressing that many of these factors created an environment that was “not normal,” that perhaps your association with these experiences is that it created an environment that was “not stable.”

ANON: Oh. Okay.

ELIAS: For your association expresses to you that you lacked stability in your experience rather than normalcy.

ANON: Okay. Yeah, I’ll go with that.

ELIAS: For, in all of these experiences and expressions that you have presented as examples – your parents not being the same culture; moving to different locations; changing friends; learning in different cultures in relation to school; incorporating siblings that express a significant age difference – all of these factors could be viewed as creating an environment, in your perception, of being expressed in instability, that there is not what appears to be consistency, and there is not what you would term to be a center ground or a foundation in any of these scenarios, for it is continuously changing, or there are gaps in the interactions or there are gaps in the situations, such as cultural gaps or age gaps, and that creates another factor of instability.

And in that, it does not provide – for you – an association with safety, for there is no constant foothold, and therefore there is, in your perception, nothing to grasp hold of in your environment to provide that stability. Then you add in the factor that you perceive yourself as different from other individuals, and that creates an association that you cannot even maintain or even create and develop a foothold or a grasp point with yourself; that regardless that you yourself are the one constant in all of these scenarios, you are unable to discover some foundational element with yourself that can provide that factor of safety in an ever-changing environment.

Which, I would express that an aspect of why you could not generate that foundation of yourself is that you have continuously groped with comparisons, attempting to find SOME comparison that would allow you to generate those beginning bricks of the foundation; therefore, comparing yourself in every scenario to different aspects of outside expressions, but that they do not fit together – in a manner of speaking, figuratively, viewing yourself as the round peg and all of your reality, all that is outside of you, as millions of triangular holes. And in that, regardless of which hole you turn to, to attempt to fit into and therefore begin to lay the bricks of the foundation, you are continuously presented with the triangular holes.

In this, there is the differences between the cultures of your parents and choosing, “Which culture do I fit with? Which do I associate with? What am I more similar to?” and the experiences with other children, but in different cultures: “Which culture do I fit with? Which experiences do I fit with?”, [and] with your siblings and the age differences, and attempting to discover some similarity in that. In this, it has been what you could term as a lifelong struggle of comparisons.

This, I would express, is a very significant aspect of the difficulty and a significant aspect of what has created within you that feeling and experience of being different, not fitting, and therefore not being “normal,” when in actuality it is not as much a question of normal as it is safety and stability.

Now, in this, it also includes very strongly what we were discussing in our previous conversation in relation to associations and senses, what you input to yourself – and you may actually be surprised how strong of an influence your senses play in all of these experiences, for they input information that influences your associations through sight, through sound, through touch – very much so through touch, which, as I have expressed, touch is a very, very active sense and not necessarily in relation to what you come into contact with in physical objects, but that energy plays a very strong and enormous role in relation to your sense of touch.

For just as your sense of touch responds to temperature, which you cannot see, or air, which you cannot see or hold and is not an object that you can physically generate contact with, or elements such as wind, movement: these are factors that are a part of your environment that are very interactive with your sense of touch – and so is energy.

When you are within any particular physical location, there is energy in that area. When you are in physical proximity of other individuals, there is energy being expressed. When you are in physical proximity with objects or with creatures or with vegetation, there is energy that is being emitted, and it generates contact with you and with your sense of touch.

Therefore, your senses play into your perception and how you evaluate your environment, your world, yourself, very strongly. And, when your most familiar action is comparing, the interplay of senses with that action is tremendous. For remember what I expressed to you: Your senses are designed to input information in an absolute manner. That is not to say that what you are sensing IS absolute, but this is the manner in which they function.

Therefore, when you are interactive with a group of children, hypothetically, and all of the children in this group have dark hair and you have light hair, (emphasizing the following) without any interaction, without any other information, if you are comparing automatically, if this is your automatic mode of expression or mode of evaluation – which may be more accurate – without any other information, your eyes, your sense of sight, inputs information that all of these other children have dark hair and you have light hair, therefore you are different. Therefore, you do not fit.

Your sense of hearing: If you are within interactions of other individuals and not necessarily in a group but throughout a time framework, and every individual that you encounter expresses a particular tone of voice; perhaps their tone of their voice is expressed in a lower note than your own, and you perceive through sound, through the hearing of your own voice – which is somewhat distorted, but regardless – if you hear your own voice to be a higher tone than most of the other individuals that you encounter, without any other information, if your manner of evaluation is to compare, that information is inputted once again: You are different and you do not fit.

These are very simple, mundane examples that emphasize how important sense information is and how influencing it is – and it is very influencing. Now, especially if your method of evaluation is comparing, which it has been throughout most of your lifetime, this can generate significantly discounting information that you are inputting to yourself. It also reinforces that factor of not incorporating the stability of a foundation. How can you build your own foundation if there is no thing to build upon, if there is no stability? It is difficult to build an actual physical structure upon waves on a beach, for the waves are continuously moving and changing, and they are continuously altering the beach beneath them. Therefore, there is no constancy; there is no stability to build a structure upon that type of expression.

In like manner with yourself, if all that you perceive is changing, and that the only constant is change itself, how can you build your own foundation of yourself? You can, but not if the main method of your evaluation of yourself is comparing, for in that, it merely reinforces the change. For you are, in that comparing, constantly attempting to fit yourself to some outside source.

And through time, and in relation to your senses and the aspects of self-protection and alert, which we discussed in our previous conversation in relation to danger, if you are recalling, —

ANON: Yes.

ELIAS: — that creates distorted messages to you, and that affects your ability to trust. And eventually, it creates a situation in which trust becomes so foreign to you that you do not even understand what that expression is any longer, for it appears that there is no safe element and no expression TO trust within your reality.

This becomes compounded through time with experiences that are reinforced by all that is familiar to you in relation to the comparisons. But that also in itself can become very confusing, for in those comparisons, occasionally you may evaluate that there is some aspect that you want to hold to with yourself, or that you somewhat appreciate with yourself. And even that becomes threatened with that constant comparison, and therefore it creates confusion.

Now, what is significant in the process that we are engaging now is reconstructing you. In that, allowing for the wrecking ball (laughs), so to speak, to demolish the comparison evaluation mode and to re-establish and rebuild a new foundation that is not based upon comparison, that is based upon you: who YOU are, what YOUR guidelines are – not what you have been taught, not what you have learned, not what was stable or normal for your parents or your siblings or for other individuals that you encounter throughout your life, but what is important to you, what is stability and safety for you, what is normal for you. And that becoming the foundation upon which you can build yourself as your own structure, and in that, generate your own consistency, your own stability, and therefore your own normalcy – which includes, not excludes, your sensitivity, your feelings, your emotional expressions, for those are natural components of you, therefore they are normal for you and not to be excluded from your foundation and therefore also from your structure of yourself. These are important factors of you, not to be discounted but also not to be compared with other individuals.

In this, also to be acknowledged that rather than comparing yourself with other individuals and what they have accomplished or what they have done, or what they are or who they are, or how they express, to view yourself and look to your own experiences and acknowledge your own accomplishments.

Now; one of those is very significant. One of those accomplishments is your relationship with your partner. You drew that to yourself, you created that, and quite effectively, for what you drew to yourself was a complement. You did not draw to yourself another individual that expresses in the emotional capacity that you do; you drew to yourself an individual that is different, but that lends a genuine complement to you. Therefore, that lends a balance. You did that. Do you hear me? You did that.

ANON: That little bit went out there. You said it lends a genuine complement, lends a balance, and then it blanked out.

ELIAS: It lends a balance in that complement. It lends a balance to you – and you did that. You drew it to you. You created that. That is your accomplishment.

And in this, it may be a factor in which we can begin to build that new foundation, upon that acceptance of YOUR accomplishment, that you created that complement, and that complement is acceptable, in all of its aspects. (Anon laughs) That in this complement, you can be centered, you can feel what you feel, you can express what you express, you can generate the sensitivity that you do, and it is acceptable. Do you agree?

ANON: Yes, very much so.

ELIAS: This can be your beginning point of creating this new foundation. And in that, perhaps we can include the analogy of the waves and the beach. But rather than a beach, perhaps you are more likened to the waves that are flowing and changeable, and he more likened to a rock face, a cliff, at which the waves and the cliff meet and intersect, but they complement each other. For in that, as the waves beat against the cliff, it erodes and it changes; but the waves change also, for the cliff creates a barrier, and therefore the waves are contained. They complement each other.

In this, perhaps your foundation can begin to be built upon that solidity, for the cliff is solid, and you can build a foundation upon that. But not upon him; knowing that YOU created that, that is YOUR accomplishment. Therefore, you are building the foundation upon what YOU begun. (Pause)

ANON: Hello?

ELIAS: Yes. Now; I would also express that building this new foundation requires different materials. You are very accustomed to using the materials of comparing. These materials are not effective with this new foundation. They crumble, and they do not allow you to build a structure that will stand. Therefore, it is important that you generate new materials to build with. And in doing so, it is important that you begin to notice what materials are at your disposal and what you are already generating, what resources you already have.

In this, it is also a matter of each time you present yourself with the encounter of the old material of comparing, that you set it aside; that you recognize it and acknowledge it and you express to yourself, “No, this material is not effective for building this structure. Therefore, I will set this aside.”

There are beneficial uses for comparing, but not in your experience thus far. Your uses of comparison have served to confuse you and discount you. Therefore, we are not entirely discarding the expression of comparing, but we are definitely setting it aside and not using it. Therefore, temporarily it can be a decoration in your construction site. (Both laugh)

ANON: Well, I get it. But what do I do instead?

ELIAS: What do you do instead? You draw upon the resources that are available to you that you are not accustomed to drawing upon, which are what you do accomplish, what you do like about yourself.

What do you like about yourself?

ANON: That I’ve got a good sense of humor.

ELIAS: Very well.

ANON: I look nice. And I’m artistic. That’s a start.

ELIAS: Those are a significant beginning, for one involves appearance, which is a significant aspect of each of you. You each express an appearance. That is your projection of yourself in a physical manner to the world. If you dislike your appearance, you are continuously presenting to yourself that aspect of projecting yourself to the world in an unsatisfactory manner. Therefore, that is significant. You like your appearance.

ANON: I do now. I didn’t always, but I do now.

ELIAS: It matters not whether you… It matters not whether you did always. What matters now is that you do now.

ANON: Yes.

ELIAS: And therefore, that is a part of your foundational tools. You like how YOU project your appearance to the world. That is significant. You like that you incorporate a sense of humor, that you can be amused and that you can amuse – which is also an important tool, so to speak, in the building of your foundation, for it is more than amusement; it is an ability to entertain. And that ability moves in both directions. It is an ability to entertain in relation to other individuals, it is an ability to BE entertained by other individuals, but it is also an ability to entertain yourself (Anon laughs), and that is significant. It may be surprising to you how many individuals do not understand how to entertain themselves.

ANON: Okay.

ELIAS: Therefore, this is a significant aspect.

What I am expressing to you is, rather than comparing yourself, or what you think or what you do or how you express yourself, or basic components of yourself such as sensitivity and your emotional expression, rather than comparing and using that as your tool, begin to draw upon other tools of building that are also natural components of yourself: what you like about you. The expressions that you like about you are your building tools.

ANON: Okay.

ELIAS: Just as an individual would incorporate tools of a hammer or a saw to build a structure, you also incorporate tools to build the structure of you, to make it firm, to develop it, and to construct it in the most aesthetically wondrous manner that you can imagine. And the manner in which you begin to do that is to use those tools of what you like about you, concentrating your attention upon that – NOT concentrating upon and generating an importance with what you do not like, which is very familiar.

It is very familiar to you to discount yourself and to focus upon what you do not like, or what is different, or what you perceive to be wrong or bad. What is significant in building this new structure is to focus upon what you DO like and enhance that. Use it. Express it. Rather than placing it upon a shelf and perhaps glancing at it occasionally but never actually engaging it and never actually using it, remove it from that shelf, dust it off and use it.

ANON: (Laughs) Okay.

ELIAS: And in this new direction, I shall offer you another exercise, for I am well aware of how fond you are of them. (Both laugh)

ANON: Another one! Yay! Okay, go ahead.

ELIAS: And in this exercise, in relation to using your new tools – or rather, your old tools that are dusty and that you may be re-engaging now – your new exercise is to generate a quest to discover what all those tools are. What are all those tools that you incorporate that are sitting upon your shelf that are collecting dust? What is it that you like about you? – ALL of the aspects that you like about you, regardless of what it is. It may be that you like the manner in which you organize your table when you set it to express a meal. Or you like that you will stop in certain moments and pet your cat. You like that about yourself.

You like different aspects of yourself for different reasons, but what is important is that you begin to SEE all those aspects of yourself that you like, that you have merely occasionally glanced upon throughout the years and that are almost unrecognizable for they are encased in so much dust upon that shelf that perhaps you may be feather-duster-in-hand rather than a sword. You shall yield your mighty feather duster (Anon laughs), and you shall approach that shelf and you shall be dusting off all of those objects of what you like about you.

ANON: Okay.

ELIAS: And viewing them with new appreciation, and as you dust them off, recognizing that they actually express brilliant colors, which employs that tool of you that you are artistic. And in that, your artistic expression that you like about yourself can be employed with all of the other likes of yourself, for you can begin to view them more artistically and in new, brilliant colors.

ANON: Mm-hm. That would be nice. (Elias chuckles) That would be very nice indeed!

ELIAS: (Forcefully) And in this exercise, use your senses.

ANON: Use my senses.

ELIAS: Let them help you. I have expressed to many individuals in recent time framework, this present wave with your senses can be very beneficial. It can be fun, for you can play with your senses. You can even argue with your senses – in this, employing that other tool that you like about yourself, your humor. You can use your senses to enhance all that you like about yourself.

ANON: Okay. (Sighs) Well, that sounds a lot more cheery than when we started. (Both laugh) I’m feeling a lot happier now.

Can I squeeze in my quick question about my cat?

ELIAS: Yes. You may.

ANON: My feeling is that she’s been throwing up lately. I think it’s just her reaction to me getting agitated, but can you verify this and that it’s not an underlying health problem? And also is there something that I could give her that would be of benefit for this, or even her overall health?

ELIAS: (Breathes deeply) I will validate your impression.

ANON: All right.

ELIAS: I will express to you that this action is very closely associated with your energy and your anxiety. I will express that the calmer you allow yourself to be and the more relaxed you allow yourself to be, the more relaxed she will be.

I would also express, in what can you do? I would suggest that you offer time frameworks each day in which you, once again, employ one of your tools that you like about you and quietly, calmly engage a brief time framework that only involves you and her, whether it be sitting in a chair and merely petting her, or holding her, or perhaps even merely just looking at her, but that your attention is focused only with yourself and her.

[The timer for the end of the session has been ringing]

I would also suggest that if you are so choosing, you could incorporate a very slight, very small amount of mint in relation to her diet.

ANON: Okay. As in the leaf? The mint leaf, the plant?

ELIAS: Yes, but crushed and very small. If you are incorporating an actual leaf, perhaps a half of a leaf, for a mint leaf is not very large.

ANON: No.

ELIAS: In that, a very small amount, but that may also be somewhat settling.

ANON: Okay. Thank you very much.

ELIAS: You are very welcome.

ANON: I feel a lot better, too.

ELIAS: (Laughs) Congratulations!

ANON: So we’ll talk again soon.

ELIAS: Very well. I shall be anticipating of that, my friend.

ANON: Okay.

ELIAS: I shall be offering my energy to you in consistency and in stability.

ANON: Please. Yes. That sounds so nice.

ELIAS: Until our next meeting, my dear friend, au revoir.

ANON: Bye-bye.

(Elias departs after 1 hour 3 minutes)

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Copyright 2011 Mary Ennis, All Rights Reserved.