Living Intentionally
Topics:
Session 201905171
“Living Intentionally”
Friday, May 17, 2019 (Private/Phone)
Participants: Mary (Michael) and Linda (Ruthanna)
LINDA: Elias?
ELIAS: Yes!
LINDA: Oh, okay. (Laughs) I thought maybe you’d gone away.
Well, I don’t have a page of questions. I have a page of doodles. (Both laugh) So, I’m not sure what the significance is of that. I see one doodle that looks like a neuron cell, so (laughs) I don’t know. The one word I did write was “Yee-haw!” in response to this wave being about rules, (Elias laughs) considering that last session you told me that was my intent, was to explore rules, so I figure I’m in for a ride on this wave.
ELIAS: (Laughs) And it may be tremendously beneficial to you.
LINDA: (Laughs) I’m going to put my money on that one. (Both laugh) See if we can flow it that direction.
I guess maybe the best way to start is to check in. One thing that seemed to surprisingly happen abruptly, after a very long process, is I have the sense that my knee has finally healed after almost two years, to the extent that I think I’m going to go contra dancing tonight.
ELIAS: Ah! Congratulations!
LINDA: Thank you. And at some point, it might be beneficial… Interestingly, I’ve put off ever actually asking you the underlying issue there, and maybe today I might circle around to it.
I think where I seem to be struggling is in regard to the job creation part of my life. Last time we talked, I was really excited about creating this job at the university with people I had worked with this past year, and I interviewed with them and it seemed to go well. We laughed a lot. We connected. We connected a lot. And I was interested more and more in what was happening, and the interest inspired me to do some reading and some exploring in tangential areas, linked areas to what they were doing.
And it was this process—at first it was this process of acknowledgment. I started reading in the neuroscience of teaching and dealing with transfer students, underserved students, and started realizing and recognizing how much of what I’ve done in the last twenty years, the body of work and experience in teaching, and that inspired me and my imagination started playing out.
And yet… and I bumped into this wall, because it’s been four weeks now since I interviewed with the university. I’ve applied for other jobs that seemed like they fit my experiences, and I even wrote a cold letter, which I had not done before, to our local community college thinking I might just create a job out of thin air. But I find it really difficult to maintain the inspiration and enthusiasm because I’m ready to do something. It’s been two years.
I left my job at UTD in part because I was lonely. And I find myself more isolated than ever, more lonely than I have ever been in my entire life. I find it really disconcerting to be inspired and to want to do something and have no fucking clue about what the next steps are. And in that, if I follow those feelings they eventually end up taking me to that place of panic in which I think nobody is ever going to hire me, I can’t even get the people who know me and who have worked with me interested. And it takes a considerable amount of time talking myself out of that place, or doing myself out of that place.
So, I guess what I’m asking you is what the fuck is going on with me? Which implied in that, of course, is what am I doing wrong?
ELIAS: I am aware. It isn’t about what you are doing wrong. And I understand that it seems that I continuously repeat the same information over and over again, but I do because you haven’t quite understood it yet.
LINDA: Is there a button you could push that would help that process? (Both laugh) Anywhere, I’m open! (Both laugh) You get your buttons pushed.
ELIAS: I would say that how I would respond to you would be the same as I did in the very beginning with the initial group and engaging them. And they would ask the question to myself, why did I not give them information before certain actions occurred? Why did I wait until AFTER an action would occur to offer information about it? And my response was, because without the experience you don’t understand. Without experience, whatever information I give to you is simply concept and you don’t necessarily realistically apply it because you can’t, because you don’t understand it because you don’t have the experience. You THINK you understand it, intellectually, but you don’t.
And this is the situation now, and continues to be so. It is a matter of what you pay attention to. You always create more of what you pay attention to and of what you concentrate on. It is automatic.
It isn’t difficult, what I am expressing to you. It doesn’t require significant amounts of time or tremendous effort or difficulty. And that is the piece that you don’t understand yet. You continue to think that there must be extensive, lengthy methods that you should be engaging to do right, to move in the right direction, to stop moving in the wrong direction, to stop doing the wrong thing. And your expression of that, your statements about that or your questions about that are the indicators that you don’t understand yet. Because I have expressed over and over and over, it isn’t about the right choice or the right direction or the wrong choice or the wrong direction. It isn’t about doing something wrong or doing something right. It is about what you pay attention to.
And it is about recognizing that you always have choice. And that in always having choice, you also choose what you feel. But you don’t believe that or understand that yet ,or you wouldn’t express that you have to fight with yourself and that it incorporates long periods of time to stop feeling what you feel. It doesn’t require long periods of time. It isn’t difficult. You make it difficult because of what you are making important.
And in that, it is about recognizing once again what the function of feelings is. They aren’t a communication. They don’t tell you what to do or not do. They are signals.
Now; what I would express to you is once again, the first piece is it isn’t about right and wrong. It isn’t about the right choice and the wrong choice, or what am I doing right or what am I doing wrong. It isn’t about any of that. Therefore, the first piece is to eject that from your thinking entirely.
LINDA: But isn’t that what you’re actually saying to me, is that you’ve shared all of this information and I don’t understand it, and because I don’t understand it I’m not doing it the way to produce the results I want. Isn’t that what you’re saying? It’s not right and wrong in the moral sense of right and wrong, but it’s right—
ELIAS: It isn’t right and wrong, PERIOD. It isn’t right and wrong, period. You continue to think—
LINDA: But it’s not the correct way.
ELIAS: — in that capacity. That is how you think. But it isn’t about right or wrong. And in that, it is about what is comfortable and what isn’t comfortable. You AREN’T comfortable at the present time. The choices that you are making, you are not comfortable with. You are not happy, you are not comfortable, and in that, you don’t see what the choices are to make you comfortable or make you happy. And this is also the point of what I have been saying.
You don’t have to know. You don’t have to define that. It isn’t a matter of that, because if you are being present and if you are looking at what choices you are making now and what you are doing now and what you are paying attention to NOW, and if you don’t like it and if you aren’t comfortable with it, if you stop and you CHOOSE DIFFERENT, you don’t have to know what the outcome is eventually. You don’t have to know "what makes me happy," because you are stopping the unhappy, which then allows you the freedom to make more choices that lead you in the direction of being happy.
And remember: doing something different and stopping an uncomfortable feeling doesn’t automatically make you feel good. Good feelings don’t automatically replace bad feelings. You make good feelings after you stop making bad feelings.
LINDA: So, could we maybe work through an example I’ve experienced?
ELIAS: Yes.
LINDA: So, one of the things that has been inspiring and that has drawn together my study of neurolinguistic programming, neuroscience, neuroplasticity and even epigenetics is the neuroscience of learning, the way I’ve taught. And in part, it was inspired by conversations we had several years ago about changing the way I teach. And it was inspiring despite the changing context with politics. But it was inspiring. It was one of the most inspiring changes I made. And this job interview led me to reconnect with those ideas, that experience that I’ve had in changing the way I teach, to teach to the way at least science would say (laughs) we learn. My experience would say we learn outside of that. And I feel really inspired when I read and I reconnect, and I see yeah, I did that, I didn’t do that, but ooh, wouldn’t it be fun to do that? And my imagination is engaged. And then I’m like okay, but here I am sitting in my reading chair, and I don’t know how to then engage that excitement and how I make choices in the present moment to engage that signal that this is exciting, this is inspiring, this is what I want to do. And I don’t know what to do with—
ELIAS: You don’t have to DO that. That is part of the difficulty, is that you are looking for a piece that isn’t there.
LINDA: I know, but I’m… But the day IS there. I wake up every morning, and I have to decide, "What am I going to do? I don’t have a job. I have this inspiration, I have this thing I would like to do, but here I am, it’s Monday morning and what am I going to do today?" (Laughs)
ELIAS: And in that, then you have the choice to follow that inspiration. It doesn’t mean that you have to be engaged in a job following that inspiration. It doesn’t mean that you have to be generating some earth-shaking action in relation to that. It means you choose to engage what interests you, whatever it may be.
And in that, what you are doing – and if you have to objectively remind yourself of this, then do it – what you are doing is you are practicing trusting yourself in that you are expressing what you want and that you are moving in the direction. You are trusting by engaging intentional choices. Even if they aren’t ultimately the choices that you want, you are trusting that you are building that foundation by trusting what you are doing now. And you are building faith.
LINDA: And so, when you say that I engage things that interest me, you’re not saying that I go back to my chair and sit and read more about what I want to do and imagine more what I want to do—
ELIAS: You could.
LINDA: I just dump that out and I go do something else that inspires me or that interests me?
ELIAS: I would say both. You could do either, or you could do both.
LINDA: And that I don’t have to—
ELIAS: In that, what I am saying to you is whether you go in the direction of placing yourself back in your chair and reading more and inspiring yourself through reading, or you engage some other action – perhaps you engage your dog or you are gardening or you are doing some other activity that you enjoy doing and that is responsive to your inspiration.
LINDA: Responsive to my—
ELIAS: Because you trust that whatever you are doing today, whatever choices you are making today, are setting the foundation for tomorrow. What you are doing today is building your trust in yourself, your inspiration, your direction and your choices, and building that element of faith, which is the trust in what you can’t see yet, knowing that everything is interconnected. And it is.
And throughout the day, when you slip in a direction of doubt and questioning yourself and wondering what you are doing, you stop and you express intentionally a different choice. This is the beginning of living intentionally. And the more you do that, the more you actually create in the direction that you do want, because you are being consistent and because you are creating more of what you are already doing. And you are creating more of what you are already paying attention to and what you already have.
It isn’t about acquiring. I cannot emphasize that strongly enough. It isn’t a matter of acquiring; you already have. It is simply a matter of manifesting what you already have. And how you do that is by paying attention to what you already have, because you always create more of what you are already doing, what you already have and what you are already paying attention to. That is what you create more of.
Therefore, if you are in one respect inspiring yourself by reading but then moving in a direction of thinking and feeling and doing, frustrated because you can’t do anything about it, then what are you likely going to be creating? What are you likely going to be creating more of? The inspiration? Or the expression of “I can’t do anything about it because I’m not in a position to do anything about it”? THAT is what you are concentrating on. That is what you are paying attention to more.
Let me express to you, this is the reason that I have expressed so many times how important it is to pay attention to everything that you are doing during the day, because all of those expressions that you think of as being big and important – a job, a home, a relationship, a vehicle, anything that you look at as being important choices, significant choices – they require very little energy compared to the constant energy that you are expressing every day, twelve, fourteen, sixteen, eighteen hours in your day of waking, objective choices. THAT energy you are expressing constantly.
LINDA: Hm.
ELIAS: [Inaudible] with other individuals, and it may incorporate an hour, or even several hours, as opposed to days and weeks of hours upon hours upon hours upon hours of engaging consistently in other expressions of energy.
Now; which weighs more? Which is actually more important?
LINDA: Hm.
ELIAS: In that, all of those actions that you do within the day and the associations that you are making every day are what are so important. And let me express to you, you are making associations with every single experience that you have. Whether it is pulling an ice tray from your freezer and looking at it and deciding whether to refill it or not, or whether it is which pair of shoes to wear, or whether it is reading a subject that interests you and inspires you and then spending the rest of the day expressing in many different capacities how you can’t do what you want to do. And THAT may be expressed in manners that you don’t even realize. You may be expressing throughout the day, and one of those expressions may be “I can’t even walk my dog because it is raining.” “I can’t, I can’t, I can’t.”
LINDA: Well! Here we again, huh? (Laughs)
ELIAS: And it isn’t that you are doing something wrong! It isn’t about doing something wrong. It is about simply paying attention and evaluating, “Is this what I want to feel now? Is this what I want to do now?” And stop looking for that elusive answer, because it doesn’t exist – because you haven’t created it yet!
LINDA: Okay. Well, I’m going to go contra dancing tonight (laughs), and we’ll see what…
ELIAS: Excellent. THAT is an example of intentionally doing different, and in a manner that IS what you want and IS reinforcing you.
Now, what I would say to you in that, acknowledge yourself in that tremendously. Even if you don’t dance as much as you thought you would, it doesn’t matter. Acknowledge yourself, and recognize that that is a direction that you will automatically create more of, because that is what you are paying attention to.
LINDA: Well, thank you. That will give me extra incentive to go tonight.
ELIAS: Excellent. Excellent.
LINDA: Well, we’d better let Mary come back, but I appreciate it. We’ll have much to play with in the next month.
ELIAS: (Laughs) Excellent, my friend. I shall greatly be anticipating our next meeting, and I shall be offering my energy to you, as always, in great encouragement and supportiveness. You can do this—you can.
LINDA: All right. We’ll see you on the waves. (Laughs)
ELIAS: Very well. In tremendous lovingness to you, my dear friend, au revoir.
LINDA: Au revoir.
(Elias departs after 32 minutes)
Copyright 2019 Mary Ennis, All Rights Reserved.