SSunday, May 29, 2022 (Private/Phone)

Participants: Mary (Michael) and Vivienne (Eliza)

“You can’t move in the direction of choosing intentionally UNTIL you are actually being present and not living in memories.”

“Therefore, it’s a matter of recognizing first, “This is not about other people resolving something for me.” Second: “This is about me catching myself as soon as I’m moving in the direction of thinking about a memory and stopping it.” Next, it’s about “This is how I resolve it, not how the other person resolves it for me.”

VIVIENNE: One thing I did want to ask about: It is really that very subtle change of looking at things, isn’t it, that with regards to becoming aware of your responsibility and creating your reality it’s just a very subtle thing that you keep it from falling into something negative?

ELIAS: It can be. It doesn’t have to be entirely subtle. I would say that it’s many times not so very subtle and much more obvious that you ARE moving in a direction of allowing something to be negative when it’s a matter of paying attention to WHAT you’re doing.

And in that, what I would say is it’s not necessarily that it’s so subtle, actually, but it’s more that you’re so accustomed to expressing in a particular direction that you don’t notice right away, that you’re so accustomed to moving in the direction of the feelings that you don’t notice that you are doing that until you are very much in the feeling – and sometimes even THEN you don’t notice.

And that may sound strange – how could you not notice when you are feeling something? – but when you are so accustomed to moving in the direction of feelings and following them, it’s very easy to not actually notice, because following feelings isn’t simply paying attention to the feeling. If THAT were the situation, it might be much easier to not follow them. But the act of following feelings is you begin with a feeling, and then you move in the direction of the thinking. And the thinking is not necessarily directly about the feeling, because the thinking moves you in many other directions.

Therefore, you might have a feeling of being wrong about something, let us say. And then the feeling you notice perhaps for a few seconds, maybe even close to a minute, but actually, you don’t pay attention to THE feeling for tremendously long before you start thinking. And when you start thinking, you’re not necessarily thinking about THAT feeling; you start thinking about other experiences. You start remembering a different experience, you start remembering something in the past, and you begin moving down THAT path of thinking about the experience, what happened, what you were thinking at the time. And then you tangent off into thinking about what other people were involved, and then you think about them, and then you start thinking about certain judgements you have in relation to them.

Therefore, it’s your THINKING that’s moving you in all these directions. And in that, you’re not actually paying attention any longer – and you HAVEN’T been – to the initial feeling. Now you’ve wound down the path of different memories and different people, and different associations that you have with them, and different experiences, and you’ll move from one experience to another to another in different memories. And in that, you’ll move into different expressions of feelings, which you are still not actually noticing the feelings; you are paying attention to what you are thinking about. And in that, THEN – now, this becomes the subtle part, because the FEELING actually becomes recessed, and that becomes the subtle part.

Because THEN, you might be becoming irritated or angry at recalling certain memories, and [with] that feeling of being angry you’re not paying tremendous attention to the feeling itself; you are paying attention to the memory, and you don’t notice that then the feeling is dictating your behavior. Because then you’re, let us say as an example, becoming angry at something that you are remembering, and you’re not necessarily paying attention to the feeling of being angry; you’re paying attention to the thinking of the memory. And then something happens: your partner comes into the room, or you are walking outside and someone passes by you, and you have a reaction. And your reaction is obnoxious, or is irritated, or is dismissive.

And in that, THEN you notice, and you notice that your behavior is something that you don’t necessarily like, and you notice that your behavior is perhaps inappropriate, let us say, meaning that it doesn’t match whatever is actually happening in the moment, that there’s no reason for you to be irritated at the present situation. And therefore you notice THAT, and then what happens is you begin expressing a judgment about yourself because you behaved in a manner that you don’t like.

VIVIENNE: Mm-hm, yes.

ELIAS: But you haven’t really noticed what led up to that. One moment you’re thinking about something that happened 40 years ago, and the next moment you are being irritated at a situation or at another individual, and you’re noticing that and you’re expressing “Oh, I don’t like that. Why did I do that?” And that’s the piece, is noticing, catching yourself in those memories. Catching yourself when you are moving in the direction of paying attention to all those memories, and in that, I would say that it’s the easiest to catch yourself in the first moments, when you are first remembering some past experience, to catch yourself at THAT moment and express to yourself, “That’s not now, stop thinking about this, this is unproductive. I’m repeating a habit of going into these memories and thinking about what happened previously.”

Now; let me also explain to you: the reason that people do this is because you are taught from very, very young ages to not be paying attention to you, to be paying attention to outside sources. And it’s not that you are taught by someone expressing to you, “Don’t pay attention to you. Pay attention to what the other person is doing.” No; you are taught by example, by WATCHING what other people do, and that is your greatest teacher.

Now in that, you are taught to be paying attention to what other people are doing, because that’s influencing you. Or, you’re not actually taught that it’s influencing you; you are taught that it’s absolutely affecting you because YOU’RE not creating your reality, the other person is. And they are creating your feelings, they are creating what happens to you, they are creating all of your choices, therefore you have no part in anything, therefore you become this perpetual victim of what other people are doing.

Now; in that, that’s the foundational piece. What you are also taught by example, because you are taught to be paying attention to what other people are doing, is that you can’t resolve anything yourself; that in order to resolve something, you need someone else to acknowledge you, to apologize to you, to express their responsibility to you. You need them, this outside source, to resolve something for you, and that’s the reason you are influenced to continue to keep recalling these memories, because there’s no resolution. Because if someone expressed something to you that was influencing you, or in your idea and your perception “making you feel” in a certain manner, then you can’t STOP feeling that until they resolve it for you – but that’s not true.

VIVIENNE: Yes.

ELIAS: Therefore, it’s a matter of recognizing that this is part of this entire habit, that you’re continuing to go backwards and go backwards and go backwards, and recall this memory and this memory and this memory, BECAUSE it’s unresolved. And it’s unresolved because there’s this expectation that whoever else was involved is supposed to resolve it. But they won’t!

VIVIENNE: No, no.

ELIAS: Therefore, it’s a matter of recognizing first, “This is not about other people resolving something for me.” Second: “This is about me catching myself as soon as I’m moving in the direction of thinking about a memory and stopping it.” Next, it’s about “This is how I resolve it, not how the other person resolves it for me. How I resolve it is I stop this habit of continuing to move in this direction of recalling memory after memory after memory and simply being distressed or angry or frustrated about it. How I resolve it is I stop giving that all the power. That’s how I resolve it, is that I put myself in the present, and I remind myself, “I’m the one who’s creating my reality – not this person or that person or this situation, I’M doing it. And if I’M doing it, then I’m choosing NOT to move in the direction of these memories. That’s not now. My point of power is always in the present; and in that, I’m giving my power away to memories by NOT being present. And in THAT, I’m simply disempowering myself over and over and over again.”

Because what does that mean, “giving my power away to memories”? It means you are giving your power away to the air! Because the memory is nothing; it’s only a memory. Therefore, you’re simply letting all your power go and giving it up to the air, and in that, then you’re left with none.

In this, it’s a matter of (with emphasis) taking back your power. It’s a matter of tapping into that tenacity that you have, that you’re not going to allow something else to dictate to you. YOU’RE going to dictate what you choose, and what you want to do, and what direction you want to move in.

You can’t move in the direction of choosing intentionally UNTIL you are actually being present and not living in memories. You have to be present and living in NOW to be able to then begin to chose intentionally, and live intentionally. You can’t do that if you are living in memories.

In this, what I would say to you is, as soon as you pull up a memory, as soon as a memory begins to form because of some feeling that you are having, in addition to telling yourself to stop, remind yourself that moving down the direction of following this memory, therefore following that feeling by following that thinking, is as unproductive as following some memory from another focus. You’re not in another focus; you’re not experiencing in relation to another focus, therefore it is pointless to follow some memory that you might happen to recall from another focus. It’s equally as futile to keep moving in a direction of following a feeling that leads you into following memories.

VIVIENNE: This could be applicable to everybody. It’s not just me who does this.

ELIAS: Oh, it IS applicable to everyone. This is not only you; this is EVERYONE. And in that, I am simply explaining to you what actually happens, and therefore you … [Audio connection breaks]

ELIAS: Continuing! Now in this, the point is that you can catch yourself at the very BEGINNING of a memory and notice “I’m thinking about a memory again” and then stop yourself.

Now, even that might be challenging initially. This is [audio cut off] that it requires practice. And the reason it’s challenging isn’t because it’s so difficult to notice, but it’s difficult to make yourself stop it, because it’s so familiar that you automatically actually want to think about that memory. And, you may even tell yourself, “It’s good for me to think about this memory, because it gives me information.” No, it doesn’t. It literally does not. You’ve already thought about all of these memories multiple times. There’s nothing new that you are going to present to yourself in moving in that direction of entertaining the memory of anything again.

It's, in a manner of speaking, a trap that you set for yourself by telling yourself that if you are continuing to think about this that you will give yourself new information. What I would say to you is, this is the point of expressing to yourself, “No, what is the most important is for me to be present. No matter WHAT I’m doing, the most important thing for me to do is to be present, and I’m not being present if I’m following this path after a memory.”

And in that, if there’s something that that memory has, let us say, embedded in it that might be beneficial to you, you don’t have to think about it. THAT is (chuckles) the gloriousness of memories, is that you don’t have to be thinking about them. If you present a memory to yourself, and you catch yourself and you tell yourself, “Stop, I’m not going to think about this because it’s not productive, ” if there’s ANYTHING embedded in that memory that might be of benefit to you, you will subjectively express that with yourself; you don’t have to follow down the road of the memory itself. Your subjective awareness will catch the piece that is a benefit to you and will apply it. (Pause)

This is also the part that I have expressed many times about issues and trauma – mostly trauma – but I would say that in that, you don’t have to go through and recall all of your experiences individually, because all you have to do is recall one or two and your subjective awareness will then be doing the rest of the work. You need to have some involvement of your objective awareness, therefore that’s the reason that it’s important to engage one or two memories, but from that point, your subjective awareness addresses to it, and it actually does the work for you.

But what is the difficulty in relation to that is that if you keep moving in the direction of following the feelings by engaging your thinking and following through memories, then what you’re doing is you are continuing to move in opposition to whatever your subjective is addressing to, because… Let me express it in this manner: Let’s use an example of an actual physical wound, because that’s easy to observe. In that, if you have a physical wound, let’s say – which is actually quite literal – that you have this physical wound and your subjective awareness is healing it. Which it actually is, because your subjective awareness is instructing your body; therefore, it’s instructing your body to heal that wound.

Now; your body is moving in a direction of healing the wound, and if YOU keep moving in the direction of pounding on that wound or reopening it, your body keeps moving in the direction of healing it but you keep opening it again. And therefore, it makes it very difficult for that to entirely heal.

It’s the same in relation to your emotional expressions and wounds. Therefore, if you have a situation in which you have a trauma from years ago, and you are looking at that and you actually address to it, and then the subjective awareness takes over, in a manner of speaking, and it is healing it, but you keep moving in the direction of repeating the memory of it over and over and over again, and you keep reliving it, then it never actually heals because you keep opening that wound again and again and again and again.

Therefore instead of reopening the wound, whenever you have a memory of something that is bothersome to you and you are beginning to move in that direction, it’s significant and important to stop yourself and remind yourself, “Every time I do this, I’m reopening this wound. I’m not doing this again. I’m not going to think about it, I’m not going to recall this memory, I’m going to stop.”

In that, you might have to tell yourself several times, “I’m not going to think about this, I’m not going to think about this,” because you are very accustomed to thinking about things. And therefore, your thought mechanism is going to be considerably loud and repetitive. And it’s going to keep thinking, even though you are telling yourself “I’m not going to think about this.” THAT’S the reason that I’ve expressed how important it is to also follow that by DOING something different: change your environment; walk outside; walk into another room; do something different. Turn on your television, turn on a recording of music; do something that is going to jar your thinking and move it in a different direction, that is going to move your attention to something else.

THEN you can actually begin to see, eventually, how that action of moving into those memories is not quite as automatic as it used to be. It does require practice, therefore it’s not going to happen immediately, but you will begin to see that eventually you stop automatically moving in those memories – and even if you do, it’s easier to stop it.

(Excerpt ends)

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