21st Century Reality

LOVE

2009-09-24T11:25:00.003-05:00

There is a part of you deep inside, buried by layer upon layer of beliefs we hold as truths that knows what I am about to write about.

The Eskimos have more words for snow than you can shake a stick at, and yet we have but a single word for one of the most complex emotions in the human experience. All of our uses for the word ‘love’ seem to connote varying degrees of affection; affection for an experience, for people, for things, for places. The word can get quite watered down and washed out depending on how often it is used and what it is referring to. My love for hamburgers is not the same as my love for my children, although both uses of the word refers to affection. It’s not as though we suffer because of our one word for the many degrees of affection. So why write about it?

I write about it because we are consciously unaware of the deepest meaning of the word. In Transformation of Myth Through Time, Joseph Campbell writes of five orders of love. Of the highest order he says, “The highest order of love is where there is nothing but love - mad, engaged, illicit, careless of the rules of the world, a breakthrough into the transcendent. This is the comparable experience to that of saving somebody at the risk of your own life. Passion, impulse has taken over to
such an extent that the world has dropped off.” Many of us have experienced this order, but the second part of it, the part where we save another at the risk of our own life, hints at the meaning of love I want to address. It really doesn’t have to do with affection, especially when saving the life of a stranger. So what is this deepest meaning of love that sends us into harm’s way to save another with no concern for our own being?

To accept the meaning of love that I wish to put forward requires a bit of a makeover of our understanding of who we are. Our experience tells us that we are individual hunks of matter only rudimentally connected to those around us. If I cut my finger I bleed and you don’t. Chaos theory, however, tells us that everything affects everything else. The most familiar phrase is that a
butterfly flapping its wings in Mexico can ultimately result in a tornado on the Oklahoma plains. For us to understand and then accept the deepest meaning of love we must first understand that we are all connected; the paradox being that we are separate yet one with everything at the same time. NOTHING, absolutely NOTHING we experience is accidental. It may appear so in the moment, but that is the ego’s interpretation.

There is a wonderful tale in the 18th Sura of the Koran. The story involves Moses and the guiding angel, Khidr. The two are traveling together and come upon a small village. To Moses’ horror, Khidr sinks all the boats in the bay. Moses regards this as an evil, but later learns that there were robbers about that were ready to steal all the boats. By sinking them Khidr saved them for the villagers. Khidr then attacks a young man and kills him. This evil again shocks Moses, who later learns that the man was about to kill his parents and that it was better for him to die at the hands of Khidr than to become his parent’s murderer. The last straw is when Khidr has a wall collapse in the village. As per his habit, Moses is again shocked at this evil. Only later is it discovered that the collapsed wall unearthed a hidden treasure for two orphans. Khidr is forced to leave Moses as he cannot see the hidden goodness in the momentary acts of apparent evil. Here Khidr has the larger viewpoint of the Self, while Moses is stuck in the smaller view of the ego. What the story intimates, but does not explicitly say is that both Moses and Khidr represent aspects of each individual, but it is Khidr that represents that aspect of ourselves that chooses. Most of us would agree with Moses’ perspective, for most of us operate through the myopic view of the ego. Eventually, however, you will see that we can get to the larger perspective of the Self and it will be this that holds the meaning of love, for it is only our inner Khidr that understands it.

Love cannot be instilled by decree. What one person loves, another hates, but this has to do with preferences and opinions. Does unconditional love mean the same thing as unconditional affection?
I’ve always balked (choked is probably a better way of putting it) at the idea of unconditional love. It doesn’t work for me according to our current understanding of the word. There is no way I can hold affection for every person on the planet. There are some serious assholes out there. But I can appreciate them and I can know them, and therein lays the deepest meaning of the word ‘love.’

Of course, I make the assumption that we are all here to experience consciousness in physical form, and not as some stepping stone to a ‘better place.’ I also assume that there are no victims and that we draw precisely every interaction to our experience. There are No mistakes except what ego (Moses) tells us are mistakes. To Khidr there are no mistakes and what appear as errors eventually reveal themselves otherwise if we but trust all of our experience and understand what the experience is telling us. Oh, I almost forgot. Our entry into the world is also not an accident. It is by choice.

Love is knowing and appreciation. It is less about affection than it is about knowing that each one of us has chosen a complex reality to experience. Both sinner and saint have taken on quite an adventure where each is intricately intertwined with everyone else’s adventure. This is the knowing aspect of love. I know that even those that I dislike have chosen a similar adventure to my own and that underneath the apparent reality that we are all separate, we are also connected as a unified whole.
As spirit we are all responsive to the whole and this is where the appreciation comes in. I know that if you rear-end my car, I precisely drew that experience to me for my own reasons, and that you drew me to your experience for your reasons. I did not draw you to me so that I could blame you and call you an asshole. I learn nothing about me in doing that except how I respond to such incidents. If you feel you were a victim then you may have created that event to bring this to your attention. It says that in that moment you believed someone else created your reality.

Basically you are in cahoots with me and I am in cahoots with you in whatever we create. Now, I don’t have to like you or the experience, but if I am to follow the deepest meaning of love then I will appreciate your willingness to participate in my drama. More importantly, however, I will appreciate the journey that YOU have undertaken, knowing that who you are is also me and that all journeys are legitimate in their own right; neither right or wrong.
Now, the willingness to participate in everyone’s reality comes not from conscious thinking (Moses), it comes from a deeper level, our inner Khidr, if you will.

Khidr can be made conscious, but it takes an expanded awareness and an understanding that our reality is deeper and more complex than we had heretofore imagined. All of you have felt this from time to time. When I finally got this I took everyone off my hook, for I then knew that when conflict and trauma appeared in my life it was by invitation only and not by the mysterious magic wand of a God I could not understand. I was able to take God’s mysterious ways off my hook and love him/her anew for the wondrous gift of free choice. My affection has remained for people, places and things that align with my preferences. I have greater affection for some than I do for others, just as we all do. But now I can truly say that I love all that I perceive. I know you and I appreciate you.
Bill Marshall

GETTING OUT OF MY OWN WAY

2009-02-19T15:43:00.004-05:00

Because of time we live in an apparent reality of processes to which we have attached the belief of cause and effect. If there is an effect we believe there has to be a cause and visa versa. This is a really big belief, and much of the time it
serves us pretty well, unless, of course, you’re falling out of a tree. Processes are not the impediment to creating what we want, nor is cause and effect. The impediment lies in all the associations we attach to process and cause and effect. As you may recall from my last post, associations generate judgment and expectations. We hold expectations regarding how a process SHOULD unfold and how long it SHOULD take to unfold.

Let’s say I break my leg. It doesn’t matter how. I’ll bet you an economic recovery that most of us have certain expectations regarding what the process of healing should look like. These are all belief driven. We go to the hospital. They take x-rays. They find a fracture. They cast the leg. A few months later they take off the cast and tell us to go easy. This is an easy one, for we generally do not get in our own way. Everything goes according to expectations. We’re comfortable with the process…most of the time.
We TRUST, that by following doctor’s orders, the leg will heal. It may be inconvenient, but pretty much the leg healing is a done deal. If you want to heal your broken leg in one day then you will have to deal with all the beliefs involved in the process mentioned above. So let’s stay away, for now, from these on-the-spot creations because you can’t just think them into existence.

Why does the leg heal in the example given? Because we trust that it will based on the experience of others and ourselves that have established association in our body consciousness. We allow the process to unfold without our interference and the body responds to our beliefs. This is all completely without thought, for thought is not necessary. We trust in the process as long as the process unfolds according to expectations. But, let’s examine a trickier problem. Since the economy is in the crapper, let’s look at someone who has been laid off and is looking for a job. All of the beliefs attached to getting a new job can be tossed in the garbage if we trust (have no doubt) that we will get a new job.
To hold that trust, which is a deep knowing, we must LET GO of our expectations regarding how the process will unfold and when the process will be completed. Let’s say we have enough cash on hand to get us through two months of unemployment. The problem here is the beliefs that creep in as we approach the 7th week and still don’t have a job. Those beliefs begin to create doubt, which opposes the trust that you will get a job. Here is where you begin opposing yourself.

This is how we get in our own way. We start out with trust and follow the process of searching for a job. We submit 50 applications and have 10 interviews. We expect to get a job…….but, we have a time frame in which we expect it to appear. We have placed a condition on the want.
This is where we trip up. TIME. As we approach the 8th week we begin thinking, “Did I submit enough applications?” “Did I come off well in the interviews?” “Was there something I should have said, but didn’t?” “Am I too old?” “Am I too young?” Our minds will come up with numberless reasons why we have not been called as the deadline of eight weeks nears. At this point we have lost trust.

For those of us who have incorporated the Elias information we might begin the NIRAA (notice, identify, recognize, address, accept) exercise. This is a method and we are a race of folks that have been hypnotized into believing we need a method in order to accomplish. I was a part of this huge club and it is a club whose founding member is the belief in cause and effect. The instant we begin using a method we begin to corrode trust. Why? The instant we projected the want it was created. If it was already created and you fully trusted that it was then why employ a method? I’m not talking about process here. Process is what we did to heal our broken leg and process involves time. We are involved in processes constantly and rarely engage our thinking to create what we want. For instance, we turn our ignition key and the car starts. We eat food and it nourishes our body. We don’t go to thinking about beliefs and what am I doing right or what am I doing wrong. It’s automatic and without thought or method. We don’t get in the way of ourselves. We DO get in the way of ourselves when we don’t trust that what we want will manifest itself.

Quit checking in on the process. See yourself as already having the job. Let go of the want and grab hold of the have. Want projects lack and that will be the energy projected. Kimi, on the Elias forum I visit regularly, likened checking in to baking a soufflé. She said, “If you open the oven, the cake deflates. You leave it alone and it bakes. You can’t keep opening the oven every minute. You’ll ruin it and it will never get done. You have to be patient and that timer will let you know when it’s done.” Elias might change ‘patient’ to ‘allow’, but we all knew what Kimi meant.

WANT, TRUST, ALLOW, MANIFEST

WANT, TRY, CHECK IN, WANT, TRY, CHECK IN, WANT, TRY, CHECK IN……HAMSTER WHEEL.

Bill Marshall

ENERGY AND THE LEPRECHAUN

2009-02-12T13:06:00.008-05:00

(My profile and links still remain at the bottom of the page)

This post is a rewrite of segment of an Elias transcript. I've reworded and added many things to facilitate ease of understanding.

Usually when you create an experience that you do not like or that you do not want you ask the question, “Why did I create this?” You then ask, “was what I wanted what I actually wanted? Maybe I only thought I wanted it, for if I really wanted it I would have created it.”
This is how the “WHY” question turns on itself and confuses you. Before YCYOR you blamed fate or chance or someone else when you didn’t create what you wanted. But now that you are beginning to believe YCYOR you blame yourself for not creating what you want, or are unable to figure out why you created what you did. You say I am either doing something wrong or I don’t want what I thought I wanted. But most of the time you DO want what you think you wanted, and so when you do not create it you get confused. You begin to think that you do not know what you really want, or, you just don’t have the mechanics down for creating what you want.

This all involves energy. Even though thought does not create your reality, it does translate what you do create and thus it is important IN creating your reality. Remember, the translation is of the communication you are giving yourself through what you have created in the moment. Although thought can confuse you, most of the time it DOES accurately translate information you offer it. What you DO is also a factor in how you create. Your associations are also a factor. Associations are what you form or what you create in relation to an experience. You generate an experience and you create an assessment of the experience, which includes a judgment, good or bad. Once that association is formed, it generally remains with you. An association is the assessment that you generate in relation to an experience that includes a judgment.

The reason this is important to define and to understand is that you all generate many, many, many associations. You do not generate associations with future, for you have not experienced that yet. You do generate associations with past experiences and with present experiences. But past experiences and the associations attached to them affect what is created and are the most confusing in the present, for they confuse you with your present experiences, coloring them in relation to past experiences. For example, you associate money with acquiring and with work and earning. You typically do not associate money as falling out of the sky. You want money and your associations tell you that you must work for it. You want to work, but your associations with finding fulfilling work tells you that it is difficult and make take a lot of time.

Associations are many times, but not all, expressed in our feelings. The coupling of the feelings (associations) and the thought process you generate in conjunction with the feelings, along with ‘what you are doing’ are the factors that influence perception. AND it is perception that creates your reality.

Let’s liken energy to a leprechaun. Your leprechaun does NOT distinguish between good or bad. It merely grants your wish in whatever way you express (energy projection) it. This is the reality of free will. It doesn’t matter to the leprechaun whether what you are expressing is good or bad, comfortable or uncomfortable. And what you are expressing is not necessarily what you want. What you express is energy. For instance, if you generate an action, and the doing and the feelings, the associations, the thinking, the thought mechanism and all of them are aimed in the direction of “NOT ENOUGH” then it is the “NOT ENOUGH” that will be expressed, or in other words, created. If you want money and all of the above is directed to ‘I don’t have enough money,” then not having enough money is what will be created. Your leprechaun will give you exactly what you express. Yes, you want money, but you are expressing in energy a lack. It doesn’t matter to the leprechaun whether you like what he gives you or not. He will always give you what you express in energy. Energy manifestations are simple. What is difficult is recognizing and paying attention to the energy expressed. If you do not have enough money and want some, then what you are expressing in energy is a lack of money. “I want some money because I don’t have enough.”

You may be homeless and so your thought process, your associations, your doing are all concentrated in an energy of LACK, and so it is the lack that will continue to be expressed. You might go to your refrigerator and notice that you are low on juice. The association is that “I am low on juice. (lack)” . Thought then follows the association by saying I have to go to the store (an association). That moment is now gone and you have noticed nothing regarding your associations, your thought translator, or what you are expressing. You immediately head for the store. You were NOT aware of the energy you have expressed outwardly. The energy projected was LACK.

Maybe you put $10 of gas in your car and when you go to pay you notice you only have $9. The immediate association is that of lack…you are short a buck. You somehow come to an agreement with the attendant, but will not notice the energy expressed…lack… and you will offer it little thought other than to be embarrassed, which is another action of lack (your lack of having enough creates the embarrassment). You will discount yourself in that you created an embarrassing situation and that will compound the energy output of LACK. You will always draw the same energy that you project.

Your energy is as powerful as a nuclear explosion. But rather than blowing things away it acts as a magnet and attracts. It will pull to you any expression that matches what you are projecting.
This is the importance of energy. The outer world, your objective imagery is abstract and so one form of energy projection can draw thousands of different types of imagery (what we call ‘real world’ things) to you that are associated with that one type of energy. Think of the energy of lack and all the different ways you can you can experience it.

When you ask, “Why did I do this? Why did I create this?” the way you answer that question is to evaluate what you are doing; what you have been doing; what you have been physically doing and engaging, but also what you are doing inwardly, what associations are you generating? So, let’s say you are concentrating on not having enough money and you want to counter this projection of lack, and you start doing affirmations like, “I will generate abundance. I am worthy of money. I want to create wealth.” You do this day after day and still find that you have not created any difference in your reality. You get frustrated and think that maybe you didn’t do the affirmations long enough or often enough. So you do more affirmations and still there is no change in your reality. WHY?

You are doing affirmations, but what are the affirmations ASSOCIATED with? Are they present? No, because your associations are linked to the past, but you bring them to the present. Do you feel your affirmations? Do you KNOW that within yourself? Do you truly know that you are worthy? Do you truly know that you create abundance. No, you do not. You are concentrating on not having enough milk, not having enough time, not having enough energy, not having enough in your relationship; you do not have enough control, etc. But you are not paying attention to this energy expression of lack. You concentrate on your affirmations and continue to notice that you are not creating what you want. You do not create abundance because your energy does not project abundance. It is not moving in the direction of abundance. The leprechaun says, “OK, you want ‘not enough’, I will give you ‘not enough’.

When you DO create what you want, you are often surprised and the ‘why’ question pops up again. Why did I accomplish this, but couldn’t accomplish that? You accomplished because you did not question. You trusted. Trust is a lack of doubt. When there is no doubt you create with ease. The reason it is easier to create what you want than it is to create what you do not want is because creating what you do not want requires opposition. The energy projection is that of TRYING. Trying does not accomplish. Trying attempts. How is the energy of DOING different? Doing projects an energy that says you ARE accomplishing, and not that you WILL accomplish. As Yoda in Star Wars said, “Not try. DO.”

Energy is expressed through processes and processes require time. And since energy works through process it is important to pay attention to the now. Why? Because only in the NOW can you create what you want in the next NOW. Each action that you create in the NOW within a process is an action that is already creating what you want. Each action you generate creates branches, mostly unforeseen, that spring from your newly growing tree. You are generally unaware of how those branches form, but if you are paying attention to the process of their formation you can manipulate their form. When you ANTICIPATE their form you are using associations and employing expectations. When you really know your direction and the form the branches will take you will not question it. Associations form expectations and expectations destroy trust when the form goes against expectations. Expect what you want to appear, but let go of expectation on how and when it should appear. This kills trust.

Importance is another factor. You pay attention to what is important to you regardless of what it is. Whether you like it or dislike it you will pay attention to it if it is important to you. We often pay more attention to what we dislike. The more energy you offer in a particular direction the more you create that. So if you are offering lack, you will create lack. For example, you create a headache, which you dislike. You give this importance. It is important because you wish the headache to go away. The more the headache continues the more important it becomes, and so you concentrate on the importance even more.

You can alter the direction your energy is taking by paying attention and aligning what you are feeling, your associations, which generate expectations, what you are thinking, your translation and what you are doing in conjunction with your intention. Instead of visualizing what you want, visualize that you already have it. Engage what you KNOW you already have. If you want a bicycle visualize yourself actually touching that bicycle, riding it in an area that you enjoy. FEEL yourself on the bicycle. KNOW that it is yours already. Even if it does not materialize in that moment (a function of expectations), KNOW that you already possess it. It is NOT to be acquired. It is already possessed. Pay attention to your process, what you are actually doing. . This is significant, for regardless of whether what you are doing seems to be associated with a bicycle or not, all that you do is interconnected. If you are making a sandwich and find yourself frustrated because you don’t have enough roast beef to satisfy you then that IS associated with the bicycle. The imagery may be entirely different, but that ENERGY is expressing an energy to prevent you from materializing that bicycle.

Notice the energy expressed in the moment you feel you don’t have enough roast beef and ALTER it. “This IS enough. This IS satisfactory,” and then ALLOW yourself to enjoy it. If you allow the associations and expectations of what a good roast beef sandwich should be and incorporate lack then this energy shockwave will create an obstacle to acquiring your bicycle. If you allow yourself to relax and appreciate what you HAVE generated regarding the sandwich the energy shockwave changes and it WILL positively influence your creation of your bicycle in your process. PAY ATTENTION TO THE ENERGY YOU PROJECT.
Bill Marshall

Meet My Associate...Mr. Expectations

2008-12-10T09:35:00.002-05:00

(My profile and links remain in never never land at the bottom of the page)

Associations are a big deal if we are to create what we want. Associations are links to past experience that reside in memory and are cherry-picked unconsciously every time we experience something that we have experienced before. They are highly influential in their effect on what it is we create, and they are loaded with judgment. The difficulty most of us have with being present, or being in the now, is that our associations foster very strong expectations. It is helpful to recognize our associations whether we create what we want or create what we don’t want. Why? Because if we know what is influencing what it is we do create we can neutralize it if we so choose and therefore minimize expectations. We will generally choose not to neutralize an association if it influences the creation of something pleasurable. For most of us our associations with a cake that sits on the table before us are generally favorable, especially if we are not overweight. We drag up through memory positive imagery of the taste and the texture of the cake, which sets up expectations based on past experience. But let’s say you are overweight. Your associations may be both good and bad; good regarding taste and bad regarding the effect those calories have on your weight.

Every moment is a new creation and in each moment we can choose a different influencing belief that drives our perception. For thousands of years we have not done that because we have not understood that we create all of our reality. That caloric intake affects weight is a strongly held belief that is made even stronger by our associations. Associations are like steroids for beliefs. The belief is true and not true at the same time. It is true in that you experience it as true because of your associations, but you can also experience it as not true by neutralizing the belief. How do you do that? You recognize it as a belief and accept it without judgment. You notice the associations that reside in memory and understand that each moment is a new creation. It is our associations that link one moment to the next and it is our associations that highly influence our deep seeded belief in cause and effect. Eat too much cake and you will grow fat. We know that because of our associations with eating cake. But this is not universally true since many folks can eat a lot of cake and not grow fat.

We generate expectations based on associations. Let’s say that whenever you and your spouse discuss your child’s acting-out behavior you get into a fight. You have different views on how to deal with it and so after the first discussion that ended in a fight associations are established. Again, the associations reside in memory and carry judgment. Your judgment is that you are right and your spouse is wrong and your spouse’s judgment is that you are wrong and he is right. The association is this: discussing your child’s acting out behavior is an unpleasant activity. The expectation is that such a discussion will result in a fight. So, even though each moment is new, it is highly influenced by associations and expectations and so it will very much follow a similar course as the previous discussions. Why? Because we are unaware of the power of associations and our expectations.

However, if you become aware of what influences your energy and the present moment before going into such a discussion you can create a different outcome. The present will no longer need to mimic the past for you understand that it is a new creation and that the associations attached to your discussions need not pertain to the present moment. This will either diminish or eliminate the expectations you brought with you from the past. But, if you believe strongly that the past determines the present then you will have a difficult time not repeating the past. There are 2 types of expectations. 1) I expect my want to manifest itself and 2) I expect it to manifest at a certain time and in a certain way. The first is a function of trust - that is, my goal will be met. The second places conditions on how the process of acquiring the want should look. This second expectation will kill the first if the process of acquiring the want does not meet expectations. So yes, expect the want to be fulfilled and then let go of expectations of how the process of getting the want should unfold. The expectations of an unfolding process are generated by our associations.

It’s all about awareness of what it is you believe, what associations you carry in memory and the expectations those associations bring forward. So give this a try and enjoy your cake.

Bill Marshall

Election Symbolism

2008-11-11T10:24:00.003-05:00

(my profile and post links have somehow moved to the bottom of the page?)

As you may now realize, I consider the outer world of things and experience to be abstract, while the inner world of emotion is literal. Briefly, by way of example, the emotion of anger can be represented by limitless experiences. You can slap me, call me a nasty name, or cut me off with your car and yet the anger remains the same except in degree. So, with this in mind what might the election of Barack Obama symbolize? It may symbolize different things to different people, for we create these mass events jointly, but for our individual reasons.

First, a little about what drove me to cast my vote for Obama. Although I agreed with many of his policies, this is not what ultimately drove my decision. I first saw Obama at the 2004 Democratic National Convention when he delivered the keynote address. At that moment I knew he would eventually become President of the United States and a great joy accompanied that knowing. In my book, The Forgotten Self, published in 2005, I wrote Obama into the story as President, but ultimately changed his name to a fictional name on the advice of my publisher. I knew he would be President not because of his vast experience, of which he had little at the time, but because of an energy and a wisdom that I had yet to see in others that had run before him. For me this was as legitimate a reason to vote for him as were his policies. I refused to engage in arguments supporting my choice, nor did I engage in dispersions on those that voted for McCain. There are no wrong individual choices and I understand that my truths need not be shared by others.

OK, back to the symbolism of Obama and the election. For much of our history we have called an individual black if they had any genetic linkage to what used to be called the Negro race. This continues even today despite the fact that many African-Americans have varying degrees of Caucasian genetic linkage. There was no doubt that Obama was 50% black and 50% white as his father was a Kenyan. This was as clear a linkage back to Africa as there could be. There being no accidents or coincidences this Kenyan/American joining had to have meaning and purpose. For the blacks in this country that was a clear linkage – whether they thought about it or not – to their heritage, their beginnings in this country. It is no surprise, nor should it be, that our black brothers and sisters voted 94% for Obama. It was a vote of deep emotional feeling, as legitimate a reason for casting a vote as the most rational of reasons. The symbolism of his mixed race is that of inclusion and the acceptance of differences.

It is also meaningful that much of Obama’s early life exposed him to many diverse cultures. It exposed him to differences and how those differences were always trumped by their basic humanity. That is to say that the differences were superficial when compared to the human struggle we all contend with on a daily basis. It grew in him a compassionate heart and a wisdom that those who had not had that exposure were less likely to develop. It created in him a global compassion rather than a tribal compassion that was expressed in his acceptance speech. He understood that as humans we are separated by artificial geographic and geopolitical boundaries. His life, therefore, is symbolic of inclusion, not exclusion, which I understood from his 2005 address when he said, “There are no red states or blue states. There is only the United States.”

I have lived through fifteen elections and I have never seen the emotions that surfaced during this election. I have never seen the youth of this country so energized by a candidate. I have never seen the emotion that I witnessed on the faces of Obama’s supporters; black, white, Hispanic, Asian and Native American. That kind of emotion is not generated by the intellect, but by a deeper source. It is a source that has long been buried by the male dominated intellect. We are now moving into a more balanced energy, where the feminine intuition is gaining strength. Symbolically this represents the rise of the feminine, not the feminine gender, but the feminine energy as represented in the yin/yang symbol of the Tao.

Fear still remained a part of this election as witnessed by the 62% the economy received as the primary concern of the electorate. The war in Iraq and terrorism both received 9%. There is a different dynamic in economic concerns than in our fear of terrorism. Both, however, throw our concerns into the future, which has not occurred in our experience. Symbolically our economy was attacked by Wall Street terrorists, folks that see no connection between their greed and those that suffer from that greed. As long as we believe that we are all separate and that our individual actions do not ripple out and affect everything we will spawn all form of terrorists. But terrorists are our own individual creations, there to remind us of our individual fears, and lack of trust in a beneficent universe.

I see Obama as a reflection of myself, a natural idealist who believes in the good intent of humans as part of our inherent nature. We are not born sinners, nor are we cosmic accidents of a mindless mechanistic universe. We have purpose and value and part of our individual purpose is to ensure that in the pursuit of our own value we add to and enrich the value of all others. So, I did not vote for Obama because of what he could do for me. That would negate my belief that I create all of my reality. I voted for him as a symbol, a symbol of overcoming the odds, a symbol of acceptance, a symbol of inclusion and a symbol that underneath our apparent differences we are all one and of good intent.

Your symbolism for what took place in this historic election may be antithetical to mine, or they may be similar. But, I would end by reminding you that what you hold as truth is true for you alone, even though others may share some of your truths. In this sense your truths are true and not true at the same time. Your truths are not bad. They are your guidelines. They steer you through the course you have chosen to traverse in this life. It is only when we judge our truths as good and other’s truths as bad that our lives begin to fill with conflict. When we try to convince others of the rightness of our truth we have already moved into a defense of self that has never needed defending.
Bill Marshall

WOW! He's Got Great Definition-s

2008-09-02T13:52:00.004-05:00

No, I’m not talking about the guy that goes to the gym eight times a week. I’m going to talk about the definitions we find in our dictionary and how they relate to our beliefs, which in turn affect our perception. If you have been reading my posts you know that I believe that our perception creates our reality – all of it, and since our beliefs heavily influence our perception it seemed logical to address them.

What do definitions have to do with beliefs? Just about everything. The trouble with beliefs is that there are surface beliefs, mid-level beliefs and root beliefs. The root belief is the Big Lebowski, while the mid-level beliefs and the surface beliefs attach themselves to the Big Lebowski and act as influences. We can look at gravity, time, health and aging as examples of root beliefs. We take them as absolutes and therefore do not question them. Each one has near limitless influences. For instance, one belief that influences our belief in gravity is that falling one foot is not going to hurt as much as falling thirty feet. A belief that influences the root belief of time is that time moves more quickly when we are having fun than if we were watching the second hand go round. A belief that influences the root belief in health is that we can be invaded by infectious microbes. In this case our root belief in health holds that health is fragile and must be defended. It has occurred to few of us that health is our birthright and that it is only our beliefs that weaken that birthright.

One of our greatest root beliefs is our definition of who we are…humans. Other beliefs that have influenced that root belief is evolution, Darwinism, science and religion to name but a few. The dictionary defines human as having human form or characteristics. That doesn’t say much. The human form is pretty straight forward, but characteristics is chock full of beliefs that are influences on how we perceives ourselves and therefore create our reality. What might you draw as your experience if you hold as truth the influencing belief that humans are a blight on nature? My guess is that you will experience evidence of that belief everywhere. Or, consider the belief that humans are nothing more than a cosmic coincidence, an accidental mutation of a few Neanderthal genes, who in turn were a result of a few random gene mutations of Australopithecus. With these influencing beliefs our only power lies in the fact that we have larger brains than those who came before us. There is no real power in beliefs like that.

Consciousness is a mid-level belief that Seth has called core beliefs. We believe that consciousness exists and is contained within the brain and is actually generated by the brain. With these influencing beliefs it is no wonder that we ignore all the indications that say otherwise. Out of body experiences and brief glimpses through time become unreal and so imagination and therefore awareness is stifled. You get what you believe and I am not talking about believing through thought. You can’t say to yourself, “I believe I can walk through a wall,” and then walk through the wall. The root belief is still solid and that IS the root belief; matter is solid. Change our definitions of ourselves and of consciousness and everything else will fall in place. Nearly all that we experience can be traced back to those two root beliefs. Influencing beliefs can always be traced back to the root belief, but we must pay attention to what we do in the moment, for the influencing belief can only be identified in that moment. This is why it is so important to pay attention to the NOW.

What we do leads us to the influencing belief and from there we can climb down the ladder, first to the core belief and then to the root belief. Look at the layers of belief like a tree. The influencing belief in the moment can be likened to a leaf. We work our way backward to the twig upon which it grows and then to the branch. The branch leads to the core belief, which can be likened to the trunk of the tree, and then the trunk will lead us to the root. We operate within a forest of such metaphoric trees, for we live in a belief driven reality. It is part of our blueprint.

Let’s look at the root belief of aging and how the metaphor of a tree will influence how we age. The definition of the root belief is to grow old. We age from the moment we are born, but not all of us reach old age. It is the aging process that I am concerned with here, for aging is a process and that process is completely influenced by all the beliefs that form the trunk, the branches, the twigs and the leaves. All of us experience the various influences we individually hold as beliefs attached to the root. You know what yours are. Mine are probably similar, the differences being a matter of degree. The branches of the root belief of aging and of health interweave and affect each other, for our forest is dense. If one of your beliefs is that you are too old to kayak down a level four whitewater then you will not experience that, even though you may have noticed that some folks your age have experienced a level four kayak adventure. You probably couldn’t do it even if you tried because you have solidified your influencing belief into a truth.

You might say that individual has worked out all their lives and is a product of good genes (another influencing belief). Your thinking is influenced by your beliefs. I hold many of the beliefs that you hold regarding aging, but possibly unlike you I have always believed that you are as old as you feel. How I feel in any given moment, however, is also influenced by my beliefs attached to the root beliefs of aging and health. The difference now is that I have begun to identify those beliefs and the identification of them has allowed me to choose differently in each moment. They are beginning to loose their hold as fact and truth.

I am 63 years-old. I run on average 40 miles a week and will run a marathon in October. (I’ve run over 40 of them). As a 40 year-old I ran a 15:23 5K (4:57/mile pace) and recently ran a 21:19 5K (6:57/mile pace). The difference in time is in part a result of my influencing beliefs about aging. There are many others, but I’m sticking with aging here. I have a belief that me as a 63 year-old cannot run as fast as the me I was at 40. I believe that my body cannot withstand the same training that I did at 40 and that at 63 I will amplify the body effects of less training. At the same time that I hold these limiting beliefs I also hold the belief that my age will not limit me from doing what I want to do. I want to run, and within limits I don’t care how fast I run. It’s all interwoven. My resting heart rate is 55 and my maximum heart rate is 170. My body responds to my beliefs about my body. At 40 my resting heart rate was 40 and my max was 210. I have a belief that with a max heart rate of 170 I cannot run as fast as someone who has a max heart rate of 210. Influencing beliefs reside within every moment we create. I won’t get in to how preserved my body looks or doesn’t look. I’ll let those who know me decide for themselves. It is, after all, their individual perceptions of me.

One last point. What we consider to be facts are real, but they are real for each of us due to beliefs that we hold as absolutes. When you see a fact as a fact and not as a strongly held belief you will not be able to alter the fact. Find the influencing belief, follow it to its root belief, accept it and you just might find that the fact isn’t quit the fact you once believed. Happy hunting.

Bill Marshall

Natural Idealism

2008-08-19T11:21:00.004-05:00

All of us born into the western world have acquired the beliefs of that world. The beliefs that form much of that world are contained within the tenets of our religions, science and Darwinism. Our habitual patterns of thinking about ourselves are the result of these three cultural systems. The basic premise of religion is that we come into the world tainted by sin, or, at the least, become sinful. Science tells us that our entry into the world is the product of chance and has no meaning other than the propagation of our species, and Darwinism informs us that we are filled with the primitive instincts of the lower echelon species that spawned us. With these beliefs forming our opinions of ourselves it is no wonder we find ourselves in such a sorry state.

In this world view our value lies not in ourselves as IS, but rather in a state we must attain. In other words, our value lies not in the NOW but in the future. Our value is not in the simple fact of our being, but in our ability to become better than we are NOW. Our impulses are not to be experienced, but to be squashed at every opportunity lest we fall back to the earth’s lesser forms of life from which we supposedly evolved. And yet, all of us feel that there is meaning to our lives that we struggle to recognize. This feeling of meaning seems in direct contradiction to the basic premises we are taught to believe. We baptize our infants and yet it is difficult for us to conceive that such angelic creatures come into our lives with sin. Their explorations of our world seem far removed from mere survival and the propagation of the species. Their impulses are far more imaginative than murderous. So maybe, just maybe it is those very beliefs by which we order our lives that turn our children from natural idealists to schooled pessimists.

Idealism is intimately linked to what Seth and Elias and others have referred to as value fulfillment. To understand value fulfillment requires, first of all, a far broader understanding of who WE are. If you believe you are the result of the coincidental joining of egg and one of millions of potential fertilizing sperm and you are happy with that then you probably have a hodgepodge of conflicting beliefs. The conflict results when you try to reconcile your feelings of self-worth and meaning with your belief that, not only you, but the universe in which you live is the result of chance. What if who you are is far bigger than you could have imagined? I like this Seth quote from Dreams, Evolution and Value Fulfillment, Vol. 1:

“Moreover, science's thesis meets with no answering affirmation in the human heart - and in fact arouses the deepest antipathy, for in his heart man well knows his own worth, and realizes that his own consciousness is no accident. The psyche, then, possesses within itself an inner affirmation, an affirmation that keeps man from being completely blinded by his own mental edifices.
“There is furthermore a deep, subjective, immaculately knowledgeable standard within man's consciousness by which he ultimately judges all of the theories and the beliefs of his time, and even if his intellect is momentarily swamped by ignoble doctrines, still that point of integrity within him is never fooled.”

There is a part of us that knows this, and it is driven by value fulfillment, whereby we strive to enrich our own lives while at the same time adding to the fulfillment of all other creatures on the planet. This goes to the heart of our connectedness with all things, for if we do harm in our attempt to enrich our own lives we do harm to ourselves. The end never justifies the means and when we believe so and act so we become fanatic idealists. In science’s attempt to separate the world into parts it has fostered the belief that it is sometimes acceptable to sacrifice some for the benefit of all. Subjecting animals to cancer so that a cure can be found for humans is fanatical idealism. When we execute a human for the good of society it is fanatical idealism. When our idealism considers its impact on the good, the bad and the ugly then we begin to move into natural idealism.

We can only fool ourselves for so long before that long buried inner voice again finds its vocal chords. What does that inner voice sound like? It sounds like impulse. Our impulses are one of the means by which our inner self directs our idealism, and when we suppress them they turn dark. CG Jung referred to this as the Shadow. Our murderous impulses are the twisted result of a psyche that is taught to repress our inner voice from the moment we begin to recognize it is there. Our destructive impulses are the child of a belief system that teaches us we are a mere happenstance living on a planet that is itself a happenstance. We have created a world where one person’s ideals are another’s fanaticism. We are imaginative enough to create a world where we can live in harmony not only with our fellow humans, but with every life form on the planet, but we can’t and won’t do it if we continue to see ourselves as either ‘fallen’, or mere happenstance or evolved from ‘lower’ species. We will do it when we finally come to the realization that there is no disconnect between the animals we sacrifice for the sake of science and ourselves. When we awaken to the larger picture of who we really are we will begin the march home to natural idealism, where ‘an eye for an eye’ will be seen as the call to arms of the fanatic idealist.

Bill Marshall

EFFORTLESSNESS

2008-07-21T14:59:00.009-05:00

I think this post has been percolating for more than twenty years. When I first read Seth I knew I was entering a realm where the questions I had as a child were about to be answered. The problem was, however, that I was an adult, and as such had already developed to a fine point the beliefs of my culture. There had always been a part of me that knew our reality was different than the reality we were being taught, but what I didn’t realize when I came upon Seth, was that I had already been hypnotized and was under the spell of the age into which I was born. I was so spellbound by cause and effect that it was as solid a truth as my own breath.

OK, so I create my own reality; all of it. How? That’s what I wanted to know. That is the question that the belief in cause and effect always asks. What was the process I needed to follow that would allow me to create what it was I wanted to create, and not create what I did not want to create. There had to be a process, I thought. If 1+2=3, then A+B should result in C. It was the logical way to approach such a question as “how.” An egg by itself is just an egg, but add cheese and ham and you’ve got yourself a ham and cheese omelet. You don’t add stones and twigs and end up with a ham and cheese omelet. The funny thing is, that on my way to discovering the “how”, I had completely reconstructed my beliefs about reality. It was as if a new creation myth had made a comfortable home in my head, thereby replacing a rudimentary log cabin with a mansion whose rooms shape-shift upon my bidding. It is a mansion that will not allow boredom, and it is all of my own creation. I have come to the point of no doubt.

Hummmph, you might say. I have no doubt that the sun heats the earth, but what does that have to do with anything, especially creating your own reality? When I am without doubt I am operating with full trust. In fact, when no doubt and trust are operative we don’t even think about the terms. I don’t check-in on my breathing. I trust in the process. If I cough I know that I will continue breathing in the next moment. I don’t check-in on my walking. I trust in the process and in my ability to do it. And then it occurred to me that 99% of my day is spent in complete trust that what I expect will appear. If I hold a cup of coffee to my lips, I know without a doubt that it will be coffee and not tea that my taste buds perceive. I have expectations regarding how a process should look. In other words, if I brew coffee in my coffee maker, it should be coffee that comes out. I create coffee in this manner. And yet, it is exactly these expectations that we hold regarding our processes that can destroy trust. Our trust is destroyed every time our processes go counter to our expectations. Processes that go counter to expectations engage our chattering ego-centric minds.

A process connotes something unfolding over time No big surprise there, seeing how we have a reality where time is an unavoidable component. It is time that allows us to perceive our environment and ourselves as solid. Most of the time we employ a process in moving from A to B and after repeated movements from A to B we develop belief-driven expectations of what that process should look like. When things go according to expectations we trust that our goals will be met. When they don’t we wonder why we didn’t create what it was we wanted to create. Time and process hold expectations; time, regarding when our goal will be met, and process regarding how it should unfold. If the when and the how do not meet with our expectations we lose trust and begin to struggle. We struggle against ‘what is’ because of our expectations about what ‘should be.’
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One more aspect of the ‘how’ is what Elias refers to as acceptance. This is where we remove judgment from that which we have created. Let me now try to pull this all together by way of a personal example. After finishing the Marine Corps Marathon in October 2007, my buddies and I decided to run the Hudson-Mohawk Marathon in October 2008. My desire was to finish the marathon in under four hours, which is the qualifying time for the Boston Marathon for my over-60 age group. That was the moment I created a sub-4 hour marathon. It was inserted in time as a done deal. From that point forward all I had to do was to get out of my own way, so-to-speak, and let the process unfold with complete trust and acceptance of how the process might unfold.

Now, by expectation the process should look something like this. I start training by gradually building a high-mileage base. After about a month I begin doing some speed work and throw in a long run once every week or two. The long runs build so that eventually I am doing a 20-mile run as my longest pre-marathon run. Injuries can sabotage this entire plan, at least that is the thinking of most folks who train for marathons. Injuries destroy their trust in completing the marathon because the injury is not part of the process they envision that will get them to their goal. If the injury occurs late in their training then the time factor says they do not have enough time to recover before the marathon. If it occurs early in their training they may have enough time to recover, but it may destroy their trust in their time goal. All of this is based on the beliefs of the marathoner.

So, this is what has transpired for me so far. I spent the winter months building a base on a treadmill, but when I transitioned from the treadmill to running outside in March I blew out my right calf muscle. Keep in mind that I already created the sub-four hour marathon the moment I decided to do it. I accepted the blown calf. I didn’t like it, but I accepted it. At this point, of course, the process that began the moment I created my marathon took a turn against ‘typical’ expectations. I couldn’t run, so I trained for a couple of weeks on an elliptical trainer before heading outside again. My calf didn’t like running, but it did allow me to go very slowly. So, for me, running slow became part of my new process. No speed work and no long runs became a part of my marathon training. Keep in mind that I am still completely in trust mode because I have let go of my expectations regarding what a marathon training process should look like and have accepted what appeared.

My calf finally heals and I run a difficult 8-mile trail race in May. At about the 7th mile I feel my calf acting up and finish the race comfortably by slowing down. The next day, not only is my right calf screaming in pain, but now, so is my left heel. No setbacks here, I say, just part of the process I am creating to get me to that sub 4-hour marathon. I’m not bullshitting you. I was not frustrated because I had complete trust in my ability to create my desire and I had let go of my belief-laden process expectations. I knew fully that somehow this was the process I was creating, not to thwart my desire, but to manifest it.

Here it is mid-July. I’m sitting on the porch of a vacation rental home on Block Island typing this post after having just completed a 50-mile week of pain free training. I don’t know what the next several weeks will bring in terms of process, but whatever it is I will accept it just as I have accepted my injuries. Now, you may wonder why I created those injuries in the first place. Why not create a training program according to expectations? Wouldn’t that be easier? My answer is that thought does not create. My subjective awareness in conjunction with my objective awareness is what creates. It seems as if I am only aware of what I create at the moment of its creation. That being the case, I have to trust that what I am creating is part of the perfect process of getting me what I want.

I also know that I have tended to rush things. It has been a pattern of mine. So, if the process of training for a marathon says increase mileage no more than 10% per week, I would increase by 15%. If the standard wisdom was to do one speed workout per week I would do two. See the pattern here? The process that I have created thus
far in running my sub 4-hour marathon has brought it own gifts, the greatest of which was its teaching to slow down, to stop pushing and forcing energy. The pushing and the forcing actually opposes that which I desire to create. I have also learned to finally listen to my body’s communications to me. It wasn’t saying, “Bill you can’t run this sub 4-hour marathon.” It was say, “Bill, trust me. Listen to me, but do not judge what I am doing. I will do your bidding, but this is how it will come about, effortlessly.”

I’ll keep you posted.

Bill Marshall

Fear is Fear is Fear....

2008-03-11T10:45:00.007-05:00

You may have noticed that we are in the midst of the presidential primary season here in the US. McCain has wrapped up the Republican nomination, but Obama and Clinton are still slugging it out. Both Obama and Clinton have disavowed Bush and his fear mongering politics, but Clinton has been playing the same fear card that has disguised itself as economics. Fear is fear, whether it is a fear of terrorism or a fear of losing your job and not being able to provide for your family. There is also the fear of change and it is this fear that underlies all the others.

What is fear? Fear represents a lack of trust that the future will bring contentment. Fear does not reside in the present moment, or the NOW if you prefer. When you are fearful you are fearful of something that does not exist in the moment that you are being fearful. I know what I have, but I don’t know what the future will bring if I change course. This is fear of change. I have been trying to attach words to the feelings I get when listening to Barack Obama. He encourages me to be self-responsible. He invites me to participate in the process of government. This is juxtaposed to McCain and Clinton, who tell me what they will do for me. The change that Obama represents to me, and I suspect to the millions that support his candidacy, is not government as usual, but rather, government of and by the people. Although I have always voted, I never really felt as though my vote counted for much, because other than exercising my right to vote I was never invited to empower myself. Obama invites us to self-empowerment much as Kennedy did when he said in his inaugural address, “Ask not what your country can do for you, but what you can do for your country.” I get the sense that Obama is saying, “Ask not what your country can do for you, but what you can do for yourself.”

Self-empowerment is scary business. “Who will take care of me?” “I can’t fully take care of myself.” “What if I lose my Job?” “Who will feed my kids?” “I’ll lose everything.” “If we don’t close our borders the terrorists will get in.” There is a great deal of victim mentality in these statements, but more than that there is fear. Franklin Delano Roosevelt knew about the dragon of fear when he said, “There is nothing to fear, but fear itself.” He had an intuitive sense that fear immobilizes. How do we immobilize ourselves in the present moment? By being fearful of the moment that has not yet arrived. Where do we create the moment that has not yet arrived? In the present moment. Where are we in the moment when our attention is on something that has not happened yet? Well, we sure aren’t in the only moment that creates the future, which is the one you are currently experiencing.

So, what does fear have to do with this election and the three candidates, McCain, Clinton and Obama? In getting at this it is important to remember that the objective (outer) world is symbolic of our subjective (inner) literal world. McCain represents the status quo and is the representative of those who fear change the most, but Clinton is not far behind. She is feminine gender, but for the most part expresses a masculine persona. She wants government to do what she believes we are incapable of doing ourselves. She represents the mother that wants to fix, fix, fix her children, but cannot see her children fixing themselves. Obama is physically symbolic of change. Yes, he is of male gender, but expresses a decidedly intuitive and therefore feminine orientation. (I refer you back to my posts on Men are from Mars and Women are from Venus.) Symbolically his genetic makeup represents the world as a whole and therefore the downfall of tribalism on both a local and global scale.

All this is not to say that Obama is not ready to lead our country, for he is. All this is to say that we can change business as usual in Washington. All it takes is a little courage and a little faith in that inner voice that you may hear that says, “Trust this man for the future is now.”
Bill Marshall

Ouch! That Hurt

2008-02-28T14:11:00.004-05:00

I don’t know how you feel about it – although I have my suspicions – but I hated being a victim. Whether I was a victim of an accident, or someone’s harsh words, or an angry wasp, it never felt good. Something just didn’t seem right about it. For some reason I believed part of my early religious education that said we were endowed with free will. It didn’t say we were endowed with free will some of the time and it didn’t say we were endowed with free will only until such time that God decided to go into ‘mysterious ways’ mode. No, it said we were endowed with free will. I don’t know why that stood out for me above all the other hoopla that goes along with a religious education, but it did. It eventually led to my safari into a land called awareness. I’m still there and discovering that it’s a damn big continent.

OK, back to being a victim….or not. It certainly appears that we are victims. It’s hard to argue with the families of those killed during 911 that their loved ones chose to disengage from this world. This is why many of us who pursue the concepts and the experience of creating your own reality rarely engage in such conversations with anyone other than those already familiar with the concepts. Part of the problem lies in our definitions. Thought does not choose. The thinker of the thought chooses. Descartes and his, “I think, therefore I am,” conjoined thought with self. Three hundred years later Jean-Paul Sartre realized “The consciousness that says, ‘I am,’ is not the consciousness that thinks.” That is to say that the awareness that realizes you are thinking is not part of thinking. It is the real “I” that thinking is merely an aspect of. Thought translates, and when it translates correctly it appears that thought chooses. How do you get thought to translate correctly more often? Pay attention to what you do and quit blaming what is outside you for your emotional and physical state.

Let’s just play a game. For one day suspend your current understanding of reality and ‘pretend’ that you are creating it all; the good, the bad and the ugly. At the same time you are going to suspend your judgments of good and bad because if you are creating it all you are going to be tempted to blame yourself and therefore become a victim of yourself. A victim is still a victim whether the result of outside forces or internal forces. You’re probably saying, “what difference does it make if I create being stung by a wasp or I continue to see it as I am the victim of a wasp stinging me? It still hurts and it still sucks.” The difference is this: you learn nothing from a bee sting except to avoid bees if you see yourself as a victim of the bee. You become self-aware when you realize you create it all and that it all has meaning. I’ll tell you this from direct experience. When you get the communication of a wasp sting, the sting looses its sting.

The amazing thing about self-awareness is that you begin to create consciously. As you pay more and more attention to self (the chooser, not the thoughts) then thought is fed more information, which allows it to interpret correctly more often. What this means is that we no longer need to create those things we used to create just to get our attention. In other words, you experience fewer accidents and bee stings. The more self awareness grows the fewer conflicts we’ll experience and when we do experience conflict we know that we have chosen it. There is a huge psychological difference between being the victim of conflict and being the chooser of conflict. The world becomes an objective reflection of an inner subjective state instead of a pre-existing milieu in which we bounce around like a pin ball. But, hey. Maybe it has been your choice to be bounced around and so if you enjoy the world acting like the flippers of a pinball machine, then bounce away. But, if you’ve received more than a few bruises and you’d like to try something different, then try this. You are the flippers, you are the machine and you are reflected in all that you perceive.

You also draw everything into your experience. There are no accidents. You only think there are. It makes sense that if you create it all then you draw it all, and if you draw it all to you then it seems logical that you spend a little time figuring out what you drew to yourself is trying to tell you. In a nutshell you draw specific individuals and interactions to you in order to experience what those individuals and interactions represent. In doing this you offer yourself information concerning your automatic responses. What are automatic responses? They are belief driven responses that you hold so absolutely that you that you cannot choose to act differently. An example of an automatic response might be slapping someone in the face that just called you an asshole. There are other choices. If I am accepting of myself I will not allow another’s perception of me to alter that. I can reconfigure that projected energy or I can just have it bounce off of me. If I am paying attention to me and realizing that I drew that individual to me for a reason then I need not react automatically in defense. I also need not argue against his perception (or hers). I don’t need to take his or her perception and allow it to create a conflicted state of mind.

What have I done in the above example? In the case where I am aware, I presented myself with a series of beliefs that were operative at the moment of the experience. I believe I have choice in every moment and that I have invited this experience as an exercise in choice and acceptance. In that moment I was called an asshole I was not only accepting of me, but I was also accepting of my reflection (the person that
called me an asshole). What am I showing myself in the scenario where I slap the person in the face? My automatic response is based on the belief that he or she was the cause of my reaction. I was also telling myself in that moment that I was neither accepting of myself or the other. Of course if I continue to believe in accidents, victimhood, and being the effect of a cause then the event becomes nothing more than a conflict producing experience that I will create over and over in a thousand different ways. We have free will, but we are only now coming into an awareness of how to exercise it consciously. Free will is not directed by thought. Free will is directed by what Sartre recognized as the thinker of the thoughts. It is through an expanding awareness that every single moment of our lives involves choice. As long as we act automatically we are not free. Choice is freedom.

Bill Marshall

I Second That Emotion.....

2008-02-14T14:33:00.005-05:00

If we all really pay attention we would find that a major component of our human experience is emotion. Virtually everything we do generates an emotion. Sit in a comfortable chair and we feel relaxed. Jump in a hot shower and we feel comforted. Hugging a puppy makes us feel good. Being unexpectedly hugged by someone who has just run ten miles makes us feel gross. Your boyfriend forgets your birthday and you feel sad and maybe mad. Name the experience and an emotion will be attached to it, even if it is no more noticeable than a whisper. If emotion is such a large part of our human existence it would follow that maybe it is important to understand what it really is. Let me start out by saying what emotion is not. Emotion is not a reaction. Your sadness that your husband forgot your birthday is not a reaction to his forgetting your birthday even though it appears so. He is not the cause of your emotion. He is the Trigger to release what you are subjectively experiencing in that moment.

So, if emotion is not a reaction, as in an effect of a cause, then what is it? Drum roll please… EMOTION IS A COMMUNICATION. Did I hear someone say, Huh? Emotion is a two part communication that is telling you something about you in that moment. The first part is the signal, or what we used to call the emotion itself. The signal is the feeling; sad, mad, glad, jealous, frustration, joy, depression, hate, love……. These are all signals alerting us to the communication that we have just received. The feeling is NOT the communication, just as the phone ringing is not the message. Signals/feelings are alerting devices, and in this case the feeling alerts us to the message we have just received. The message offers thought (our translator) precise information regarding what we have generated subjectively (inwardly) in that moment that the signal appeared. Let me back up a bit.

We, as humans, incorporate both a subjective and an objective awareness. They work in harmony, which means one does NOT follow the other, just as emotion is not a reaction. Subjective awareness represents our inner world, which is literal, and the objective awareness represents our outer world, which is a symbolic representation of the subjective. Objective imagery is just as symbolic as our dream imagery. OK. Let’s say in one particular moment the subjective awareness is experiencing a non-acceptance of self. This is quite literal. “I do not like myself very much in this moment.” You can’t get much clearer than that. In exactly the same moment that I am subjectively experiencing a non-acceptance of myself the objective awareness is projecting outwardly through perception a ‘real world’ scenario to represent that subjective non-acceptance of self. You may fail at folding an origami properly and judge yourself. “I suck at this.” Your husband might break wind at the dinner table and you judge him. Remember, to judge another is a reflection of your judgment of self. The objective awareness can create an infinite number of outer manifestations to represent the same literal subjective state.

If we but only pay attention, emotion can be a precise communication, identifying what belief is operative in the moment that you are actually experiencing the emotion. The feeling, again, is not the communication, but rather the signal that we are receiving a communication from our subjective awareness. Why is it important to know the belief that is operative in the moment? Because our beliefs influence perception and our perception creates our objective reality. The signal or feeling is there simply to get our attention. So, if embarrassment is the knock on the door or the ring of the phone, then what might the communication be? Let’s pick up the phone and answer the door and look at an example.

You’re at a formal sit-down dinner and you drop a hunk of gravy laden pork on your white chiffon dress. You get the signal (embarrassment) that you have received a communication from your subjective awareness. The signal is supposed to snap your attention back onto yourself. The communication comes by way of the objective awareness, which created the experience of the dropped pork. Embarrassment is NOT the communication. In the moment that the pork dropped on your dress leaving a big brown stain your subjective awareness was feeling inadequate, clumsy, stupid and judgmental about Self. Why? Our beliefs will tell us why. What are the beliefs that create the feeling of embarrassment? There are probably many and they may differ for each of us, but let’s look at a few. One might be that dropping food on yourself is the sign of a slob. Another might be that people think poorly of slobs. Here, one belief influences another. Another belief might be that drooping food on yourself is indicative of a careless person. Another might be that only children drop food on themselves. When you automatically feel embarrassment then you have turned these beliefs into absolutes. They have become your truths even though they are not true. And when we don’t recognize our individual truths we eliminate choice. We act automatically. Acting automatically is a clear sign that you have turned a belief into an absolute.

The point I wish to make in all this is that if we pay attention to what we do in the moment, that moment carries a treasure trove of information about ourselves and what beliefs we are feeding into the film projector called perception. If you continue to believe that emotion is a reaction then you will continue to give our interpreter, which is thought, inadequate information. All that you experience is a
reflection of you. All that is needed is the opening of our eyes. We draw others to us to trigger what is in US so that we may view it outwardly. So the next time your hubby forgets your birthday, thank him for being a willing player in a communication you have configured for your own enlightenment. Or, you can choose to continue in your old ways, blame him for not caring about you, and learn nothing about yourself. Choice is freedom.
Bill Marshall

Doctor, Doctor Give Me The News.....

2008-02-12T12:50:00.001-05:00

It has taken me quite some time to square away in my head how to reconcile my beliefs about modern medicine with my understanding of reality creation. Both have evolved over time. Since this is a belief driven reality in that beliefs heavily influence perception, which actually creates our reality, I started out with the faulty notion, “It’s ONLY a belief.” I also erroneously deduced that the operative belief was the one I THOUGHT I believed, rather than the one that was expressed in the moment. An example here might be helpful. Let’s say I want to lose weight and I say to myself through THOUGHT that I believe losing weight will be easy. This is the belief I think that I believe. So I begin the process and no matter what I do I lose very little weight and suffer during the entire weight loss program. The expressed belief is that losing weight is difficult and painful and so that is the belief that is operative, and not the thought-belief that losing weight is easy. I should probably mention that all of us hold ALL beliefs, but typically express only those that align with our exploration in this focus and our value fulfillment. You hold the Hindu belief (not through thought) that Brahma bulls are sacred, but it will be highly unlikely that you will express that belief. What you do is the expression of the belief, which is why it is so important to pay attention to what you do.

So, what does all this have to do with how we address our health? I have a belief that I create my health and my illness, not only consciously, but unconsciously as well. Having said that, I also believe that I hold all beliefs, including my old beliefs about health. What were my old beliefs? Disease is caused by an inability of my immune system to ward off microscopic invaders and that some physical anomalies are the result of a compromise of a particular physical system. In short, I was a victim. If I caught a cold I’d take vitamin C and eat chicken soup. My allergies I’d treat with anti-allergy meds. When I came onto this reality creation stuff in the 80’s I started with the erroneous understanding that if I understood the belief I held I wouldn’t have to believe it anymore. NOPE. This is where Elizabeth Kubler Ross erred. She died of lung cancer and until nearly the end had refused to give up smoking because she believed the ill effects of smoking were ONLY beliefs. She didn’t get it that what she was expressing within her body was the belief that smoking kills. THE EXPRESSED BELIEF IS REALITY. It is not JUST a belief. That is not to say that Elizabeth did not create her lung cancer. She did, but she did it through the operative belief that smoking kills. She also did not die before her time. Her death was her choice as was the manner in which she died. But, they were all belief driven. Remember, choice is not driven by thought. It is only when thought interprets correctly that it APPEARS that thought is choosing.

So, I have this belief that if I create all of my reality then I don’t have to buy into all of the mass beliefs about health. For the most part I don’t adhere to the mass beliefs about health, but here is the ‘catch’. The mass beliefs about health hold tremendous energy and are not bad beliefs. It is only the belief system of duplicity that says some beliefs are good and some beliefs are bad. I have, throughout my life, created a body that is rarely sick. I did have bad seasonal allergies and regular kidney stones, but was able to uncreate both without medication. I haven’t had an allergy ‘attack’ or a kidney stone in nearly 20 years, just about the time I drew the reality creation concepts into my life. Mostly I choose not to participate within the current medical model, but this is not an absolute, for absolutes deny choice. In understanding that beliefs drive perception and perception creates reality it is important to realize that we are not eliminating beliefs.

So, even when I choose to take a pill it is still me that creates the healing. I am simply utilizing the pill as a focal point to do it. The reason I don’t typically participate in the current medical model is because of a belief I have that the current model instills beliefs that destroy trust in our body’s ability to heal itself. I’m talking about our immune system that has responded to our beliefs that it is not up to the task without pharmaceutical help. But my beliefs in the matter of health are no better than anyone else’s, even the person that pops forty pills a day. It is their choice and it is just as valid a choice for them as mine is for me. What I try to do is change my subjective awareness in a way that it sends messages of trust to my body consciousness. Trust is an absence of doubt that my body, in the absence of limiting and thwarting beliefs, knows perfectly well how to rev along on all eight cylinders.
Bill Marshall

Re-meh meh remember member

2008-02-07T14:08:00.000-05:00

Here’s something that we have all experienced in one form or another. About two weeks ago, maybe more, the child of a dear friend of mine was attacked by several Rottweilers. He’s a tough and brave little dude, but was badly chewed up. I told my wife about it (my memory of this telling is quite clear) and, as expected, she was aghast; asking me all kinds of questions about the incident. Two days later I gave her an update and was informed that she had no idea the little guy had been attacked. She prides herself on her memory. I knew exactly what was happening and it wasn’t that she was experiencing the insidious onset of Alzheimer’s. If this had happened years ago she and I would have butted heads; me arguing that I did tell her and she arguing that I never told her; me thinking she forgot and she thinking I’m losing my mind. This is how most of us continue to treat such incidents. You’re watching a movie with your partner and she reminisces about the first time you saw that movie together. You’re thinking, I never saw that movie and nothing about it is familiar. What is she talking about?

OK. You know you have experienced this. How you deal with it involves your modern Cartesian mind that says one of you forgot, and that is because you believe there is one and only one THE REALITY. It becomes a memory thing because we have no other pot to put the experience in. In my example my wife and I were interactive when I was telling her about the dog attack. She was shocked and fired off a million questions, some of which I answered and some I couldn’t. It wasn’t that I mentioned the attack while she was knitting and got back an ‘uh huh.’ That’s something I’m more likely to do (not the knitting part – not that there’s anything wrong with that!!). But I’m lucky (there really isn’t such a thing as luck). I have a different pot to put these kinds of anomalies in. Some of you already know about the pot, but most of you have no framework in which to put such experiences and so they all become memory lapses/brain farts. It’s going to take a bit of explaining to describe the pot I put this action into.

The name of my pot is Attention. Attention is defined as what I am doing, not necessarily what I am thinking. Attention is action and can be multi-tasked. You are your attention. That’s sort of a mouthful, so to understand attention I think it requires an understanding of how we manipulate energy. We are all energy and we interact with each other’s energy, but not always with each other’s attention. It is important to understand that attention can move to thought, but attention is not thought. Usually, when you are interactive with another individual you are interactive with their attention. Your perception configures their body image pretty much in the manner in which they project their body image to you. And most of the time their attention is interactive with you, and visa versa. In the case of my wife and I, I configured her body image and the conversation, but I was not interactive with her attention. ATTENTION IS NOT THOUGHT. She had no memory of our conversation because her attention was elsewhere. The conversation took place in my reality, but not in hers. The movie experience took place in the wife’s reality, but not in her husbands because she was configuring his energy, but his attention was elsewhere. ATTENTION IS NOT THOUGHT.

My wife did not forget our conversation. There is not a single reality that we all perceive differently. We all create our own reality and usually (but not always) pretty much like everyone else does. If we didn’t our individual worlds would be far more strange than Alice’s rabbit hole. So memory and attention are two different things. Memory may be a brain function, definitely a time function, and a function of our beliefs, while attention is a consciousness function. We are consciousness; not, consciousness is part of who we are. When we try to memorize a string of 40 digits that function is heavily influenced by our beliefs. Those with photographic memories have no limiting beliefs that their brains are incapable of doing such things. And it is not the belief we believe we believe, it is the belief that is expressed. I can’t just say I believe I can memorize 40 digits and whallah, I do it. The belief that is expressed is that I can only memorize 10 digits and that only those with photographic memories can do 40. The expressed belief is also that only special brains can do such things. If I memorized 40 digits then the expressed belief would be that I can memorize 40 digits.

But this is all different than not remembering something because your attention was not present. Remember, your attention is you. Now, you may have left energy available for my perception to create you and our interaction, but you really weren’t involved. There was nothing for you to remember, just as my conversation with my wife never took place in her reality. It only took place in mine. There is no THE REALITY that we all perceive differently. There are six billion realities and sometimes what we interact with is the energy without the attention.

Now, there also is the time thingy. It’s called simultaneous time and it says that the you that you remember from five years ago exists now. So my wife shifts her attention to two weeks ago and cannot find the experience. This is because the experience never took place in her reality. This is tough to absorb, I know, but our physicists are gradually coming to this conclusion about the simultaneity of time. So here’s some food for thought. If all time is simultaneous, is memory nothing more than shifting our attention to the time in which the experience existed? This is what I think is happening rather than all of our memories being stored in our brains and requiring some retrieval system to unearth them. Who or what is the retriever? I believe we as consciousness is the retriever and we retrieve all of our memories by shifting our attention to the time the event took place rather than pulling them from some neuron in the brain. I can see some of my more rational friends (you know who you are) rolling their eyes and thinking, “Billy has gone off the deep end.” I haven’t but that is beside the point. With my point of view I no longer get into fights/arguments when someone seemingly forgets an event we mutually participated in. I also no longer blame someone for having a faulty memory or losing their mind and I also let go of my need to be right. My wife and I are both right. The conversation never took place in her reality, but it did in mine.

Bill Marshall

Personal Responsibility

2008-01-30T15:11:00.000-05:00

I don’t know of a single person who, at one time or another, hasn’t felt responsible for another human being. In particular we feel responsible for our children, but we also feel responsible for the feelings our actions may create in others. I want to talk about personal responsibility, but I am going to do it by rephrasing part of an Elias transcript (session 593) and adding some of my own thoughts.

The issue of personal responsibility involves turning your attention away from yourself and onto the creations/experiences of someone else, usually someone you
think needs fixing. In turning your attention onto them you assume responsibility for their reality. We camouflage this action of personal responsibility by calling it caring, compassion, sympathy, helpfulness, guidance and love. We, as good individuals, wish to offer help and support to those we feel are in need. What we are really saying is that the individual that we are feeling responsible toward is not capable of creating their reality as well as I can create it for him. In other words, they make bad choices. Most of us in our actions of personal responsibility for others feel that our fixing a part of someone else’s reality will make their lives better and happier.

Now, we may say to ourselves: “I create my own reality and others create their reality,” but the underlying belief is quite different, and it is our actions that express the underlying belief. Put another way, what we do will reveal the operative belief. What we really believe is that we create our reality some of the time and others create their reality some of the time, but we know what is best for them. It works the other way as well. We believe that others can create our reality at times without our permission. This is the expression of victim.

It is important that we understand what assuming personal responsibility for others really is and how often we do it. We do it all the time. Assuming personal responsibility for others dooms us to failure. We fail because it is impossible for us to create anyone’s reality other than our own. Not only can we not create another’s reality, we cannot even influence another’s reality without their agreement. That agreement can be either subjective (what we call unconscious) or objective (what we call conscious), but without that agreement we will have no influence. If you lock your child in his room to keep him from hitting the streets to buy drugs and he stays in his room because he can’t get out, it is not you who has kept him in his room. It is him. He has subjectively agreed with you and has objectively created his own locked door. If he wasn’t in subjective agreement he would objectively be out on the streets. It looks like you created his reality, but
without his subjective agreement he’d be snorting a line of coke. What this means is that our influence is based upon the choice of another to receive our influence. This is not done by thought although at times it seems as though thought has decided to agree. If you’ve read some of my posts you understand that thought interprets and does not create.

All of this represents the power of choice, and choice is never denied. This is what we call free will and it is an innate element of each of us. Now, since underlying this reality is the reality of non-separation then each time we express personal responsibility for another we are simultaneously discounting ourselves. When we discount another in their ability to create their own reality we are discounting ourselves.
The rest of this post are some thoughts I have on what I just interpreted Elias as saying. Not taking personal responsibility for someone else does not mean we subjugate our natural inclination toward compassion. Compassion is defined as understanding without judgment. It is acceptance through understanding that individuals create perfectly within their intent and value fulfillment. Understanding without judgment facilitates the expression of love. So how can we be compassionate without taking personal responsibility for the person we are feeling compassionate toward; be it husband, wife, child, friend or any of the billions of the down-and-outers? We do it by following our preferences and our individual guidelines without holding any expectations as to the outcome. For instance, it is part of my guidelines to provide financial support to my children until they are through with college. I don’t expect their gratitude, although I seem to get it. I don’t expect them to do anything with their education other than what they desire to do with it. If they ask my advice I give it, but without any expectation that they will follow my advice. I am not responsible for their feelings, just as they are not responsible for mine. We may trigger each other’s feelings, but we are not responsible for them. To think otherwise would make each of us victims of each other.

Expectations regarding outcomes often block the outcome we desire. Remember how you felt when you gave a gift and didn’t receive a thank you? When you give a buck to a panhandler do you hope he will spend it wisely? If so, then this is an expectation. I give because it makes me feel good. This is my preference. There are no strings attached to my compassion. I require nothing for it. Worry and guilt are not a part of compassion, but can be a large part of taking personal responsibility for someone else. So, be compassionate without expectations, but eliminate your tendency to take personal responsibility for others. Follow your own guideline and preferences, while holding no one else to the ones you follow. I think you will be quite surprised at the outcome of such a change in your behavior.
Bill Marshall

Coffee

2008-01-25T10:42:00.001-05:00

This appeared in the news on 1/21/2008. “Drinking a couple cups of coffee a day has long been considered safe during pregnancy, but a new study finds that even this modest amount of coffee could double a woman’s risk of miscarriage.”

So, what choices do we have when confronted with this kind of information? If we don’t drink coffee it doesn’t impact us at all, but if you are a woman, pregnant and a coffee fanatic then this kind of info probably gave you the shakes. It seems to me that science has made virtually everything hazardous to our health and when everything is hazardous we all become the infamous Seinfeld bubble boy, or we decide that the science can’t be right. We live in an age where cause-and-effect is king, and have therefore taken on as truth all that science tells us. It becomes an absolute, and as an absolute we don’t question it. This is why the pregnant coffee-lover trembles at such headlines. This is why we wash our hands forty-two times and day and this is why we allow fingers and probes to explore our asses and vaginas. We allow this because of our beliefs, which we hold as absolutes, or as our scientists tell us, facts. Put more simply, we believe that facts are truths.

It is a fact for most of us that we can be attacked by bacteria and by viruses. It is a fact that too much of this or too little of that can affect our bodies in myriad ways. It is a fact that if you drink Drano your plumbing system is going to be in for a rough ride. These facts, or beliefs-held-in-the-absolute as I like to refer to them, are not illusions. Down a shot glass full of Drano and you’ll know real quick. It is our belief in these facts that either keep us away from dangerous situations, like drinking Drano, or make us victims to others, like viruses or bacteria or mutating cells. But, you may have noticed if you’ve been keeping up with my blog, that I’m a pretty big proponent of the I’m-not-a victim thing.

When we catch a cold most of us see ourselves as the victim of the cold virus. When I catch a cold I see it as my creation. We all get colds, but I’ll bet you a cup of coffee (pregnant women excluded) that mine will last half as long as yours as long as you see yourself as a victim of the cold virus. My last cold lasted 2 days and was very mild. I think I created it so that I could show myself how quickly I could get rid of it. See, that is the difference between being a victim of one’s reality and creating one’s reality. There is information about me in every experience I create. For me life has become a game and the game includes all of the emotions we currently experience. And I must say, that it feels great not blaming someone or something for both the good things and the bad things that I experience. Notice that I didn’t say, ‘happens to me.’ When you realize that you create it all then nothing HAPPENS to you. Everything becomes choice. Then it becomes important to understand how you choose, because thought does not choose. But before any of this can take place a remake of our notions regarding who we are has to begin.

If you believe that facts are immutable cosmic truths then I advise all pregnant women who love coffee to stop drinking it if you want to reduce your risk of miscarriage. If you believe that facts are beliefs held as absolutes then you have a choice if you are pregnant and love coffee. Identify the beliefs, accept them (there’s going to be many more than one) and then choose. Remember, acceptance means no judgment. Many who read my blog already understand choice, but many others don’t. Those others argue that we create some things, but not all things. I understand why
you hold this position, because I held it once myself. But, it was all the questions that arose while holding that position that led me to where I am now. Choice and a self-created reality works for me and I understand quite well that I am part of a distinctly small minority in my thinking. Maybe I write these posts to gain some company, but I mainly write them because I like to. I hope you like them as well. And remember, you can like something without agreeing with it.
Bill Marshall

The Chooser

2008-01-10T12:19:00.001-05:00

Choice is a big word that carries some big weight. What bigger freedom is there than the freedom to choose? But what is it, exactly, that chooses. Historically we have given the honor of choosing to the conscious mind. That is to say that if we did not consciously choose what happens to us then what happened to us was not through choice. The thinking goes that if I stub my toe it was certainly not through choice. I did not say to myself before stubbing my toe: “Hey, I’m going to stub my toe on the leg of that chair.” Who in their right mind would consciously stub their toe? Who in their right mind would choose cancer? Rationally speaking it makes complete sense that no one would choose cancer. No one would choose a dysfunctional relationship. No one would choose any of the myriad forms of unpleasantness that seems to befall all of us. But our understanding of choice is based on a couple of things; the most important of which is our definition of consciousness. How we understand the mechanism of choice is also based on our understanding of ourselves; who we are and where have we come from. Throw in our current understanding of reality and it is no wonder that we think we choose some of the things in our lives, but certainly not all of the things. We create some of our reality, but certainly not all of it.

One of the definitions of being conscious is to be capable of thought, will, or perception. Thought is defined as the act, process, or power of thinking. Call me skeptical, but this sure seems to put consciousness in a tiny little box, just as tiny as the box we put ourselves in. Certainly our entry into this world was not by choice. Right? We didn’t choose our parents. Right? Who we are was the result of chance; the random joining of just one of millions of sperm cells with an egg. Certainly the egg and the sperm are not conscious, although it does almost seem as if the egg consciously chooses the one sperm it allows into its hallowed inner sanctum, thereby producing our physical form. So who are we and where do we come from? Are we the result of a coincidental joining of
one sperm and one egg. Science says we are. To what purpose are we thrown randomly into the world of form and matter? Could it be that our greatest misconception is our understanding of consciousness itself? Is consciousness only contained within the gray matter of the human brain, or is the human brain merely our conduit through which consciousness expresses itself in the human body? In my view the brain is much like our TV sets. The images are not produced in the set. The TV merely configures the images sent from elsewhere.

And what about reality? Is your perception of reality more right than mine? Do our dreams pierce
a veil that keeps other realities at bay while we are awake? Or, are our dreams nothing more than mind residue as our scientists like to tell us. Science loves to break down and separate and put things into categories. We have an ego, a conscious mind and a rather large unconscious mind. But since we believe that consciousness is created by matter and that it exists within matter we have placed it in a far back seat on the bus. You can’t drive the bus from the back seat. So, when it comes to choice there is no way we can conceive of choice except volitionally through the conscious mind. When we hold this understanding of consciousness and choice we can be nothing but victims whenever thought does not choose.

The way we understand consciousness and choice makes it impossible for us to move into total self-responsibility and acceptance of what it is we do create. Our understanding prevents us from trusting that what we do create in each moment is part of a process that gets us to what we want. The process may not be what we expect, but through trusting whatever the process brings we will manifest what it is we want. I had set a goal of running the Marine Corp Marathon (26.2 miles) in October 2007 with my three buddies. My training was going well (according to expectations) until July, when I tore my right calf muscle. I was reduced to walking and using an elliptical trainer. I’d run some but if I pushed things my calf would tear again. This part was not according to expectation and I began to doubt that I would be able to run the marathon. After all, who could run a marathon by training on an elliptical? I knew I chose the calf tear (yes, I’m in my right mind), but I had moved out of the trust mode because this process of a torn calf and elliptical training had never led me to a successful marathon before.

But then I got it. I created a challenge for myself and I was not trusting the method of accomplishing the goal. From that point on (about a month before the marathon) I trusted the process – torn calf, elliptical and all – and knew I would finish the marathon. There was no doubt. I was not a victim of poor biomechanics, or bad luck or even myself. I chose everything that happened on my way to finishing the marathon. Yes, I chose it, but not by way of thought. Thought is not the chooser. Thought interprets that which is chosen. Consciousness is the who, what and where of who each of us is, and it ain’t stuck in the brain. You are the chooser whether you like it or not.
Once you own that you become free. Freedom is a very nice feeling.

Bill Marshall

Knowing, Trust and Doubt

2007-11-02T13:05:00.001-05:00

I have recently come to an awareness of the power of knowing, trust and doubt. I have come to understand them more as feelings than words and definitions, which are symbolic of the feelings they evoke. Knowing is different than my understanding that 2+2=4, or that my cat’s name is Magic. True knowing requires no THOUGHT. My reaching for my cup of coffee that sits before me, bringing it to my lips and taking a sip is knowing. I projected a desire of wanting a sip of coffee and just did it. I didn’t doubt that I could reach for it and do it. I didn’t think that I had to move my arm toward the cup, move the cup to my lips and then sip from the cup. I knew without thought, just as I breathe without thought and walk without thought. Walking, however, is a wee bit different in that I project a destination, a goal so-to speak. I don’t doubt that I will walk to where I want to go. I trust in the process, but I don’t think about the trust, for the knowing is already in place.

How does knowing, trust and doubt relate to creating what we want? Throughout most of our day we are in knowing mode. We just do and expect the realization of the doing. When we are in knowing mode the only time thought comes into play is when we translate into words our desire to do something. “I’m going to the grocery store,” is thought’s translation of a desire. Going to the store is knowing and the process of getting there involves trust. When I trust I do not question the process of how I get to the grocery store. In this example the feeling of doubt does not enter the picture. So, again, most of our day is filled with knowing. It is when we project a desire that does not include knowing that we find ourselves struggling.

Let me give you a personal example. About eight months ago my buddies and I decided to run the Marine Corp Marathon (26.2 mi.) in Washington, D.C. on October 28th. When the goal was first set I was filled with knowing that I would complete the distance with my buddies, as I had run many marathons over the years. For those of you that have run marathons you may be aware that the training involved is more rigorous than the marathon itself, as it takes several months to work up to the 26.2 mile distance. The goal was set and the process began. At first everything was going according to plan, until June when I tore my calf muscle on my right leg. This opened the floodgates to doubt. My thinking went wild because I couldn’t train the way I THOUGHT I had to train for a marathon. It turned out that my knowing was conditional upon the process. As long as the process went according to my expectations my knowing held up. The process, by the way, is what I DO and not what I think, as it turns out.

Doubt lead to a lack of trust in the process, and when these two messages come knocking at your door, knowing hides under the bed. As long as I did not trust my process of getting to the finish line of the marathon I would experience doubt. I’ve been working with this create-your-own-reality stuff for twenty years now and one of the things I know about myself is that I love challenges. What I didn’t realize was how much I was not paying attention to and trusting in the process of getting to my projected desire. I was fine with trust as long as the process went according to my expectations. Those powerful beliefs that I held in the absolute went unrecognized by me until about a month before the marathon when I drew (law of attraction) to me information about knowing, trust and doubt. The process involves the now and it is only in the now that we can create our future.

I finally decided to ACCEPT (not judge) the process, calf tears and all, and began to trust the process again, but without expectations. This led to many beliefs I had regarding what it takes to run a marathon. When I identified the expressed (what I do) beliefs I found that I could choose differently. This all took practice, for it was a different way of addressing my own reality. I got back to the knowing by trusting that no matter what I created within the process the projection of my desire would manifest itself. Ultimately what mattered was the projected desire and not how I got to the manifestation of the desire. How I got there was the process, which required trust and keeping expectations at bay. Had it not been for my understanding of the concepts that go into creating one’s own reality I would not have attempted to run the marathon with the level of training I had. When I toed the line on race day I knew I would finish because I had trusted the process that got me there.

We can manifest any desire by simply projecting the desire and accepting everything that happen in between the projection and its manifestation in our lives. If you want to draw a romantic relationship into your life simply project the desire and get on with your life. Your life is the process. Trust it. You don’t need to join a social club, unless you want to. You don’t need to hit the clubs, unless you want to. But, no matter what process you undertake let go of the expectations that that particular process will get you what you want. You may be choosing a different way to draw a romantic relationship into your life. Let it unfold without judgment.
Bill Marshall

Virginia Tech

2007-05-04T09:00:00.000-05:00

For those of us that have studied Seth, Elias, Kris, Abraham, et.al., what I am about to say will make sense. For those of you that are not familiar with what these folks/ghosts have to say you may find a part of you, deep inside, that resonates with what follows. Your minds may rebel, for your thinking is heavily influenced by your beliefs, but if you pay close attention you may find a burgeoning nod of agreement somewhere within your being. Mass events, such as the one at Virginia Tech, leave us with questions that are often bigger than the event itself. Many times, if we allow it, we are left with our current beliefs more entrenched than before. Beliefs such as ‘man is inherently tainted’, ‘God works in mysterious ways’, ‘no place is safe’ and ‘Satan has a foothold in the earthly realm’ are but a few. There are two beliefs that I will address here. The first is that we are victims and the second is that something or someone is the cause of our plight. We call it blame and it is tightly linked to our sense of victimization.

By now most of us have seen the video of Cho blaming everyone and every thing for his miserable state of mind. He takes no responsibility for his own life. Blame is an aspect of our larger belief in cause and effect. If you forget my birthday you are the cause of the effect, which is my sadness. If you steal something from me you are the cause of the effect, which is my anger. Cho believes that we are the cause of his effect, which was deep depression, anger and psychosis. We believe that Cho is the cause of our effect, which is grief, sadness and anger. Our belief in cause and effect makes victims out of all of us and creates our deeply entrenched penchant for blaming. It keeps us locked in victimhood and throws us deeply into a defensive mode. We ask; how do we protect ourselves and our children from such madmen? The question itself further deepens our belief that the world is unsafe and that we can at any moment become a victim of it, and so we continue to create what we believe. Is there any way to understand the tragedy at Virginia Tech in a way that can move us away from our rock solid beliefs that we hold as truth and keeps us on the hamster wheel of victimhood and blame? I believe there is.

Mass events are created not to portray man as hapless creatures, no more in control of their lives than a feather tossed by a turbulent sea. They are created to confront us with our beliefs, for how can we accept a belief if we do not recognize it as a belief. Our beliefs represent our truths and often appear as facts. Our beliefs are the films that feed through the projector lens of our perception. Choose a different film and the projector projects a different scene. Looking at mass events or individual events in this manner takes God off our shitlist and reinstates free will to its rightful place of prominence. By noticing What we do rather than Why we do it we can unearth the beliefs that drive our perception and therefore create our reality. God does not operate in mysterious ways. We just don’t know how to drive our own cars. Maybe it’s time we learned how.

So, Cho blames us and we blame him. Sunnis blame Shiites and Shiites blame Sunnis. Arabs blame Jews and Jews blame Arabs. The Middle East blames the West and the West blames the Middle East. The Republicans blame the Democrats and the Democrats blame the Republicans. Sally blames Harry and Harry blames Sally and we are all victims of each other. Or so we believe, and so it is. Does anyone see any history in this type of thinking; in this belief of ours in victimhood, blame, and cause and effect? Does anyone remember what Gandhi created with non-violence? Cho is our creation as much as we are his. I’m going to share with you a portion of chapter 21 of a novel I wrote called The Redemption of Stanley Kronicki Jr. (not yet published).

Let me set the scene. It takes place on death row at the infamous Walls prison in Huntsville, Texas. John Tyson is soon to be executed for the murder of 16 year old Julie Baggins, committed by shotgun blast as he was robbing a convenience store. Hal Berwick is a reporter for the Jersey Journal newspaper and is there to talk to Tyson about his son, Stanley Kronicki Jr. Stanley was horrendously abused by John Tyson and his mother before the state took him away and put him up for adoption. Now, as an adult, Stanley has drifted into his own form of madness and is in the process of being redeemed by his friends. Berwick is at the prison to get Tyson’s story in the hopes that it can in some way help Stanley. The scene is about responsibility for one’s actions, not just Tyson’s, but ours as well. Here we go:

Berwick had to readjust his eyes. The man sitting across from him was barely recognizable as a human being. Berwick’s mind shot back to 1958. He was thirteen and watching an episode of the Twilight Zone, called The Sin Eater. Over time, and one by one, the people of a remote village entered the hut of the sin eater, who would take their sins and their guilt into his own body. Years passed and throughout the episode Rod Serling cleverly kept the sin eater hidden. The more sins he ate the more he moaned and the more terrible his voice became, while the villagers stayed eternally young and healthy. Then at the last moment of the last scene the camera showed Hal Berwick what fifty years of sin eating had wrought on the sin eater. He now sat directly across from Berwick in a small cage just outside Huntsville, Texas.

Time seemed to have sped-up the ageing process for this sin eater, for he looked twenty years older than his actual age. He sat stoically, almost defiantly in his animal cage, his skin blending perfectly with the white of his prison uniform. He had the gray eyes of his son that sat widely apart on a head that looked like a butternut squash set on end. At some point in his troubled life, probably long ago, he had tattooed a blood-red tear drop at the corner of his right eye. It was faded now like the man who bore it. His lips were as thin as razors and scarred as though he had been afflicted with some strange disease that required repeated surgical intervention. Hal Berwick saw the gap in his teeth and the scar on his lip just above it. His forehead looked like it had been plowed by a garden tiller, so deep were its furrows, and his face could have held a cup of water in its lines and creases. Overall, his face gave the impression of an etch-a-sketch randomly scribbled on by a three-year old. Tyson’s hand, yellowed from a lifetime of chain smoking Pal Mall straights, trembled as he hoisted the phone to his ear. It was missing a BB-sized chunk from the lobe.

“I ain’t got much time and I’m tired of livin’,” Tyson said. His voice was sandy and weak. “So let’s git a move on. Take your pictures first.”

Hal Berwick cocked his camera and captured the wizened image of John Tyson from several angles. One of them would find its way to a cabin wall in the New Jersey woods. He sat down on the hard chair and hooked-up his recorder to the phone.

“Now, tell me about my son,” the sin eater commanded. “I treated him worse than my daddy treated me. He tell you that?”

Hal Berwick nodded.

“How’d he turn out?”

They had agreed to give John Tyson something positive to carry to his grave, so Berwick lied.

“That’s good,” the old man sighed. “That’s real good. I was ascared that they might of taken him from his mama and me too late. The woman drunk herself to death. Couldn’t hold her likker like her ole’ man.”

A look of soul searing pain skirted across the moonscape of the sin eater’s face as a foggy memory surfaced then sunk again. “If I had to do it over, I would’ve killed the baby as it was being born, rather than let him live through what I did to ‘im.”

Tyson lifted his eyes to meet the reporter’s. “You tell him his daddy’s sorry.”

“I’ll tell him, Mr. Tyson.”

“You tell ‘im it was nothin’ personal. It was all me. I would’ve done the same to any kid. You know, I remember a time, when the same was bein’ done to me by my daddy, that I swore to the God that had forsaked me that I’d never do the same. Damn! I’m glad this livin’ business is almost over.”

He stopped for a moment as though something had gotten his attention, and went searching in his mind like a man feeling for a hair in his mouth. He knew something was there calling for him to notice it, but he needed to search around a bit to find it. A light went on in some far-off place in John Tyson’s mind and he found the hair.

“I tried to stop druggin’ once. It was right after they took my boy away. But they had no programs like they got now. The urge was too powerful to control without help. After that I just said, ‘fuck it.’ I went hell bent for leather after that. Straight down a dark hole to hell, which is probably where I’m headin’ in a pretty short while.”

Tyson’s mind darted off in another direction like a steel ball in a pinball machine after hitting a bumper. “You know I’m called the geezer here,” he said. “Usually they come here early; nineteen or twenty. Hell, we got a few seventeen. Some of ‘em didn’t even know there was a death penalty, not that it would’ve mattered. I was forty when I was sent to the Walls, then moved here two years ago. They only use the Walls for their killin’ now. They move me there tomorrow. I put you on my list of one. You gonna watch me get killed, Mr. reporter man?”

“Stanley asked me to,” Berwick replied. He knew it was his role to play in the redemption.

“The little girl’s folks will be there. It ain’t gonna be an easy thing to do. For me, I mean. Stupid thing I did, killin’ that girl.” His mind hit a bumper and skirted off to another part of the table.

“I’m glad they got rid of that God damned ‘lectric chair. The bug juice is better than the chair, though, what with all that twitchin’ and the stench of burnt skin an all. The bug juice is a real human way to kill a man.”

“You mean ‘humane’?”

“God damn it!” John Tyson screamed. “I got me twenty-four hours left and you’re givin’ me a fuckin’ grammar lesson. In two days I’ll be planted in Joe Byrd cemetery like a dog’s bone with nothin’ on my marker ‘cept my prison number, and you’re correctin’ how I talk. If’n I said human, I meant human.”

“I’m sorry Mr. Tyson. It’s a bad habit. My mother used to do it to me and I hated it. Strange how we do the things we hate to do.”

“Damn straight.” The pinball passed between the flippers and dropped into the bowels of the machine. John Tyson yawned. “I’m tired now, and want to rest before they take me to G wing. I want to see a friendly face when I die. Don’t let me down now, and tell my boy I always loved him, even if it was in my own twisted way.”

The sin eater hung-up the phone and signaled for CO Tilley. Hal Berwick disconnected the recorder’s earpiece from the phone and watched the old man hobble out of the room and then out of sight.

John Tyson couldn’t figure the purpose of it, them checking on him every fifteen minutes. It pissed him off. He’d been in the death watch cell for three hours and the CO’s notes had him on the toilet twelve times. Tyson thought it was a pretty good joke, and quite clever of him. He was given the privilege of dying in the clothes of his choice and had asked for a gray CO uniform, but was refused. He stuck with basic white. He wanted to die in something familiar. Tilley heard of his request and wished he was back on J wing for one more day, or even ten more minutes. Ten minutes would be all he’d need.

Tyson heard several footsteps approach and knew his time was drawing to a close. A CO opened his cell and four gray clad guards entered his tight little room. One held his death warrant in his hand, while the other three stood him up and fastened a large leather belt around his waist and hitched it under his crotch then cuffed his hands to it. They left his legs unshackled so as not to slow down his march out of Ellis.

The gate separating the Ellis population from death row was closed and the hall, usually ripe with activity, was quiet and empty. Tyson, with his phalanx of CO’s, marched to the prison infirmary, not for a final check of his health, but because it has a back door to a road. The infirmary was empty. At 4:20 PM the back door opens and John Tyson leaves the only real home he has ever known for the Walls in downtown Huntsville, twenty miles away.

The death chamber is the most attractive room John Tyson has been in for twelve years. It is slightly larger than his cell, but not by much, and the curtains in front of the viewing window give it a homey touch. In the center of the room stands the killing table, slightly longer than his bunk, and covered with a soft mattress so that he’ll be comfortable when he dies. Very human, the sin eater thought. Two arm-rests jut out from the table’s sides at an eighty degree angle, so that the whole thing looks a little too much like a cross. There are six leather straps running from the foot of the death bed up to where the arms jut out at the strange eighty degree angle, and each arm rest of the cross has its own strap. A two-way mirror is built into the wall to the left of the killing table so that John Tyson can see his body from the waist down, but cannot see through to his executioners. He had hoped to be able to look them in the eye.

Four guards, two on each side of the table are undoing the tie-down straps as John Tyson is brought toward the table. It was crowded and the mix of body odor and after-shave was beginning to make the geezer sick. Funny, he thought, how a bad smell would upset him more than his impending execution. He realized how tired he was, so very tired.

His last bed was now unencumbered with the leather straps and the pure white of the sheets made him squint as his pupils puckered and shrunk. Two guards moved him to the table and laid him down. John Tyson did not struggle as did so many others. His body embraced the softness of the thin mattress. One by one the straps were secured, a little tighter than need be, he thought. Maybe the guards were nervous, or maybe they thought he’d try to escape. But escape to where. He was so tired.

A somber man in a white lab coat entered the execution chamber with the “works,” as John Tyson thought of them. The man prepared his left arm with an alcohol rub as if preventing infection really mattered at this point. There wasn’t much fat on John Tyson’s body so the somber man’s tapping brought out a vein in no time. He reached for a number 27 IV needle and told the sin eater to prepare for a little prick.

It was a lifelong habit of his to whistle whenever he was afraid, and so he began a tune as the executioner pricked a fat juicy vein. He looked at John Tyson as recognition of the tune registered on his mind. Sympathy for the Devil was not one of his favorites, in fact he hated it. The song was, however, the darling of death row. The sin eater had the kind of mind where the melody stuck like iron shavings to a magnet, but the lyrics sifted through like beach sand through a wide mesh strainer. The low pitched growling whistle assaulted the sanctity of the ritual, and as the somber man connected the ‘works’ to the saline drip, John Tyson sang the only lyrics to the song he knew. All the cops are criminals, and all the sinners saints, followed him out of the room and greeted the warden, whose entrance ended the music.

The warden, a well muscled man in his mid-forties, faced John Tyson and read the legal document that shook in his trembling hand. The curtain was drawn, allowing the witnesses unimpeded sight of the ritual. His words echoed through a small loudspeaker in the witness gallery, the quality of which reminded Hal Berwick of the Bayonne Drive-in. As he listened to the last words John Tyson would hear from another human being, the reporter wondered what comfort the Baggins could draw from such a macabre scene. Having no children of his own he could only speculate about the special kind of love parents describe when talking about their children. The Baggins looked to be about John Tyson’s age, but clearly life had been better to them, although Berwick was certain they would have exchanged their lives for his just to have been able to embrace their daughter one last time before she died. Lorna Baggins was dressed in a black pant-suit, not out of respect for her daughter’s murderer, but as a symbol of abiding grief caused by her loss. She sat stoically in her chair and repeatedly dabbed her running eyes with a soaked tissue, waiting for the act she knew would take her pain away.

The warden finished reading the death warrant then looked at the clock. It was 11:57 PM and Harry Gleason was a punctual man. If the state of Texas decreed death to be administered at exactly 12:00 AM then, by God, he would see to it that it wouldn’t happen at 11:59 or 12:01. Following the rules was what got him to where he was today. Harry Gleason formally asked, according to the ritual rules, for John Tyson’s last words.

John Tyson was never much of a thinking man, choosing rather to spit out whatever was on his mind the instant it appeared. He wanted to say something and hoped the words would surface, as they always had, seemingly from somewhere else. The words came slowly, but they came.

“If ever there was a man more ready to die,” he said. “I ain’t met him.”

He locked eyes with Lorna Baggins. “I’m sorry I took your baby from you and her daddy, and I hope my dyin’ will bring you a measure of peace.”

The sin eater paused for a moment then directed his attention to the remaining members of the witness chamber, three reporters, the prosecutor in his case and Hal Berwick.

“I’m willin’ and I am so very ready to give up my life, not that I have any choice in the matter, but I aint’ the only one responsible for killin’ that innocent little girl. You all got a little piece of the action on that one, even if you ain’t willin’ to look at it. It’s easy for you all to say how nice the world would be if only my neighbor would change, but the world don’t grow a John Tyson in a vacuum. So, the next time you pass-by a man sleepin’ in a cardboard box, or a mother slappin’ her misbehavin’ child in a grocery store aisle, and you do nothin’ about it, I want you to think about ole’ John Tyson. In my uneducated opinion, any place that could grow a man like me ain’t completely innocent of the crimes he commits.”

He paused and looked at his IV. “That’s all I got to say on the matter.”

His head turned slowly to Harry Gleason. “I’m ready warden. Let’s get it done with. I’m real tired.” John Tyson took up the whistling and Hal Berwick sang the words to himself.

Please allow me to introduce myself,
I’m a man of wealth and taste,
I’ve been around for a long, long year,
stole many a man’s soul and faith.
I was around when Jesus Christ
had his moment of doubt and pain.
Made damn sure that Pilot
washed his hands and sealed his fate.
Pleased to meet you,
Hope you guessed my name............

The somber man caught the nod from the warden and released the Sodium Pentothal into the Tygon line, not enough to put John Tyson into a deep sleep, but enough so that he couldn’t respond to what was coming next. It was enough to stop the whistling. Next the executioner walked to his leather case and retrieved a syringe of Mercurium Bromide, sufficient in quantity to take the breath away from a charging Rhino, and injected it into the ten feet of tubing. It slithered snake-like down the tube looking for a meal and found it in John Tyson’s chest. His lungs struggled to breathe, while his brain tried desperately to continue the job it had done faithfully for fifty-three years. An asthmatic wheeze leaked through his scarred lips and his mind battled against the horror of drowning in a sea of oxygen. Next, the executioner retrieved another syringe, similar in appearance to the first two, but marked KCL in bold red letters. It was a liquid expertly designed by a chemical engineer to grip the heart in a steel fist and shut it down. John Tyson’s heart tried heroically to overcome the effects of the powerful invader, but it, too, fell prey to the clear liquid’s dark strength. His heart slowed to the beat of a death dirge while the Sodium Pentothal kept him still, and easier to watch. It was, after all, a human way to do a killing.

I shouted out “who killed the Kennedys?”
When after all, it was you and me.
Pleased to meet you,
Hope you guessed my name.......
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Well, there you have it. We never know each other’s stories, but we can acknowledge them with a smile for everyone, a kind hello and with a projected energy that says, I know you and I appreciate your story. We need to begin creating a world where none of us feel isolated and alone to such a degree they go psychotic and take thirty-two lives. We need not blame ourselves for the world each of us has created, but rather waken to an awareness of what it is we create and what it is trying to tell each of us. The telling will be different for you than it is for me, for we each have our own story and each story intersects every other.
Bill

The Unkempt Teenager: A Dream

2007-04-15T08:10:00.000-05:00

One of the things that Elias talks about is exposure; the opening of oneself and one’s energy. Exposure requires acceptance of all aspects of Self; acceptance meaning non-judgment. About a week ago a friend from the blueflash web site emailed me stating that he had dreamed about me the night before. I had been thinking recently about re-reading my old dream log; an impulse that I had not acted upon. I emailed my response to him then went downstairs and dragged out my dusty dream log.

From 1992 until 1998 I was in the throes of intense dream recall. I had already read all of Seth and in an attempt to link Seth’s information to what had gone before I began an intensive study of CG Jung, Joseph Campbell, The Tao Te Ching and all things Eastern, Houston Smith and the study of religion, etc. I must have read hundreds of books. I tell you this by way of background and where I was psychologically and spiritually at the time. I am going to share a dream I had on October 5, 1993 and exactly how I interpreted it at the time I had it. The interpretation is heavily Jungian, but laced with my understanding of the Seth material. Also, by way of background, you should know who Tyler is. He is my oldest son and at the time of the dream he was nineteen years old. When he was ten his mother and I divorced. Tyler is exceptionally bright and physically gifted and yet he barely made it through highschool due to alcohol and drug problems. I love him, have always accepted him and in many ways have seen a reflection of myself in him. With that said, here is the dream exactly as I wrote it down the morning after having it.

I was atop a mountain with Tyler. At the top was a small cave and in it was an unkempt teenager in black leather, long greasy hair, and dirty teeth. I was intimidated by him and noticed a carving in the cave. He said he carved it and that it was easy. He took out a small, but very sharp pen knife with his greasy hands and began carving what looked like a large shinny horse chestnut about five feet high. He again mentioned how easy it was and began making cuts on the chestnut, exposing the white meat underneath the protective brown shell. He offered me the knife so that I could try, but I refused, being afraid of him. There seemed to be two of him, one further back in the cave. The first one asked if I had change for a dollar. I think he was going to wash his clothes in a Laundromat. I gave him three quarters, two dimes and a nickel, but he wanted four quarters and asked Tyler for the other quarter. He then asked who gets the two dimes and a nickel and I told him to give it to Tyler.

That’s the dream and this is how I worked it, exactly as written at the time. I would work the dream differently now, but then I am different now. The associations I had with the dream symbols that resonated the most with me are in bold.
Associations:
Mountain: center – majestic – power – strength – sturdy – central mountain as in Black Elk Speaks – obstacle to overcome.

Tyler: love – problem – pain – hurt – anger – my own perceived inadequacies – my perceived failure as a parent – guilt – fear.

Small Cave: dark – scary – shelter – the unknown – primitive –a place that harbors dangerous animals – the unconscious (maybe not, because the cave is small.)

Unkempt Teenager: Unfinished – not properly trained or brought up – emotional problems – repressed – potentially dangerous – much room for improvement – in need of some love and rehabilitation.

Carving Sculpture: art – work – beauty – takes time – creativity – patience – a process.

Sharp Pen Knife: has many uses – versatile – potentially dangerous, but useful – cuts and makes one bleed – I seem to be afraid of the knife in the hands of the teenager.

Horse Chestnut: seed – the potentiality for growth – food – future chestnut tree is contained in the seed, but the conditions must be right for the tree to grow.

Dollar: money – something to pay out – something you are given in return for work – wholeness – buys things – needed for material things - green – paper.

Laundromat: inconvenient, but a place where you can get your things clean – to wash – time consuming – dirty laundry – clean laundry.

3 Quarters, two dimes and a nickel: the fourth quarter of the quarternio (a Jungian term signifying wholeness) is not whole – unbalanced – unequal – unsymmetrical.

4 Quarters: symmetry – the whole is separated into four equal parts – the Quarternio.

Dynamics (of the Symbols):
Mountain: My central self – there is a part of me that is immovable, solid and unshakable, and stands above or as an anchor for all the rest. What is that part of me? Could it be my belief in the unity of all things? Could it be my central core, who I am? The most anchored part of my life right now is my belief in God and my oneness with God.

Tyler: I think guilt is primary here and because of it I experience the anger, the fear and the pain that I see in Tyler. Immaturity also in not taking responsibility for my actions or owning my feelings. Tyler may represent my own inner adolescent although I still think it’s guilt because there’s another symbol in the dream, the unkempt teenager, that fills this role.

Small Cave: That part of my unconscious that I’m afraid of. Not the whole unconscious, but a small part of it that I’m afraid to look at. What part is that? Maybe it’s fear itself. Maybe it’s my fear of truly revealing myself and how I feel, because I don’t trust those I love to accept me. It’s the part of me that I don’t want to look at.

Unkempt teenager: My own undeveloped, untutored adolescent may be that part of my unconscious that I’m afraid to look at. It’s obvious that this person needs some work, however. He doesn’t seem to know how to clean himself. He may be the part of me that holds back the truth; that acts as a teenager sexually, i.e. immaturely. He will remain this way unless I get him or give him some help. Fear of being scolded and likes to do whatever pleases him without regard for others.

Carving, Sculpture: A piece of work, in this case, that is in the process of being completed. That part of me that I’m currently working on. My spiritual side. My intuitive side. My feeling side. It’s odd that the unkempt teenager is the one doing the sculpting. Maybe these aspects of myself can’t come to completion until I bring the unkempt teenager in me into the process. I must acknowledge him.

Sharp Pen Knife: Something that can be used for good or bad in myself. Without training and/or discipline the knife can just as easily cut and make me bleed as it can create a work of art. The knife represents a tool I must learn to use in creating this aspect of myself. What is that Tool? Could it be listening without judgment?

Horse Chestnut: There is a fully formed being within myself that is waiting to be created. It’s possible that this inner adolescent can only be brought to completion, i.e., adulthood, by working on the adolescent in myself. Strong connection between my future growth and the inner adolescent and his energy, which seems to frighten me.

Dollar: The unkempt teenager doesn’t just demand four quarters. He asks for change for a dollar – a fair exchange. The unkempt teenager has the wholeness that I need and I am holding the change that he needs to “clean” himself. But, I don’t have the right change.

3 Quarters, Two Dimes and a Nickel: One quarter of what is needed to complete the unity is missing or not in the right form. I don’t have it, but I give what is needed (2 dimes and a nickel) so that the unkempt teenager can exchange it fairly for the 4th quarter. I have the dollar, the unity, the wholeness, but can’t complete the picture and make it real without help. I have to turn to my inner Tyler (fear, guilt, anger) who will provide the 4th quarter so that the unkempt teenager can begin this process of growth.

4 Quarters: The quarternio, my inner totality. In this dream I think the 4 quarters speaks to the fact that the wholeness or unity is made up of four equal parts. One of the dominant archetypes working in my life contains the key to helping another aspect of my life. I must release fear, guilt and anger in order to allow the energy to flow through my inner adolescent so he can grow to adulthood.

Laundromat: That place in myself where inner work can take place. This must be the spirit or soul level. Cleaning or metamorphosis of the shadow into light can only take place if one consciously confronts the inner issues of life. But, you must have the proper change – not just any combination works.

Overall Interpretation:
Part of my center, being, self is occupied with the negative energy of guilt, fear and anger, but primarily guilt. These negative energies are represented by Tyler. A part of myself, occupying the whole, is unfinished, untutored and ignored. He is that unkempt teenager, who is full of raw energy and creativity. Because I’ve ignored him, he holds back the truth, is self-centered and lies for his own benefit. Although I’m afraid of him he’s not threatening me and senses my fear and distrust. I sense much of my creative energy is tied up in this untutored adolescent. I need to begin listening to him and consciously directing his growth. In this way the knife in his hands will be used creatively rather than destructively.

My fear of this energy or distrust of it has kept me from accepting the tool that would unlock the growth of the seed (my own growth). My growth will be halted until I can connect with this troubled teenager within. I need to outgrow my childish habits of not being open just to avoid conflict. Growth and creativity will not occur until my protective ego-shell is removed. I want to ignore the problem, but it won’t let me. Seeing another unkempt teenager further back in the cave indicates that growth can only be obtained by meeting and confronting all of my hidden and repressed unkempt teenagers.

This part of me seemed to want to change and be recognized. He saw my fear, but he, other than being dirty, was friendly. He was willing to pay for his freedom, a fair exchange; his wholeness in exchange for what I have that is keeping him from it. Four quarters for a dollar; nothing lost. I have to turn to that part of myself that is guilty, fearful and angry in order to provide my immature teenager what he needs to grow. This part of myself has the key, the fourth quarter.

The inner, neglected adolescent continues to show good faith by offering the two dimes and a nickel that I gave him for the quarter he needs for completion. If fear, guilt and anger lets go they will metamorphose into a quarter, but separately they are just small change. I had been the one who had unknowingly invested guilt, fear and anger with the power of one whole segment of the quarternio and it was I, in my dream, who had the unkempt teenager give them what they were really worth, small change.

Once I work on ridding myself of guilt, fear and anger, only then can my creative energy, which is locked and unsculpted in my unkempt teenager, be unlocked. Only the can he head for the Laundromat.

I had this dream nearly fourteen years ago and I’m happy to report that my unkempt teenager has made his way to the Laundromat and is now fully integrated into my life. I see many things in this dream that I didn’t see then, but the dream has wrought it magic and will continue to do so. Like a parable our dreams have many layers to them. This one is working on the me that I am now, as it remains active in my psyche.
Bill Marshall

The Secret: A critique

2007-03-29T10:53:00.000-05:00

There’s been a big whoop-te-do of late over the new book and DVD by Rhonda Bryne. It’s called The Secret, and to many the information has been a secret. The book was recently critiqued by Paul Helfrick and I’d like to add my two cents to the hubbub. I liked the book and even found some of Bryne’s ‘how-to’s’ to be helpful. It feeds into my need for process and methods. In general, however, I don’t think that those of us who have worked for years with conscious creation will find any revelations in it.

The reason I liked the book is that it serves as a perfectly adequate introduction to conscious creation. I liked Eckhardt Tolle’s, The Power of Now, when it came out in 2001 for the same reason. Both books add another rung to the foot bridge that is being built between our modern world view to our post modern world view. That The Secret doesn’t cite its primary source, Ester and Jerry Hicks/Abraham, is understandable considering the audience that was targeted. You’re not going to loosen a rock solid belief that is held in the absolute by beating that person over the head with a contrary belief. In other words, the foot bridge is built one rung at a time with each rung placed at a comfortable distance from the previous rung. Stepping is a lot easier and less fearful than leaping.

That being said, I have a few things to say about the book that those who are not familiar with conscious creation might find helpful. Like any new ‘aha’ revelation, excitement and expectations run high. It’s a little like Paul’s conversion experience while on the road to Damascus. He’s high as a kite to begin with, but eventually asks the question, “Why do I do the things I don’t want to do and don’t do the things I want.” It may have to do with the waning of trust over time. When we create what we want only some of the time, trust in The Secret’s effectiveness diminishes; and trust is the cornerstone of conscious creation, or, as The Secret would say, creating what you want. If I wanted to build trust in my ability to create what I wanted I would start small, as the book suggests. I freely admit that having worked with conscious creation for nearly twenty years, my level of trust is high. For some, trust may come easily, but I suspect for those that are firmly in the grip rational thinking trust will be easily shaken by way of the mind’s endless chatter.

The book speaks of expectations. Expect what you want. But there is a catch to this that the information presented does not recognize, or at least does not talk about. When used to excess, expectations become the tool of distrust. Bryne tells the reader to expect what it is you want to create to show up in your life. I agree, but when we begin to ask, “Where is it?” we move out of the realm of trust. Time creates process and we love process. So, allow your creation to manifest, but let go of the time frame in which you want it to appear. Expect, but quit checking in. If you want to loses weight, keep off the scale.

I felt the comments in the book about the Law of Attraction (LOA) were, for the most part, accurate. In particular was the impersonal nature of LOA, which is to say that it doesn’t differentiate between what we individually see as good and bad. For instance, LOA attends to what we concentrate on and here is where I feel the book is a bit off target, for it sees thought as what we concentrate on. Now, the distinction is subtle for it is our thoughts that interpret what it is we believe. It puts our beliefs into a language format. So, if I am thinking that I want a new car, but the belief is that I do not have one, then that is what will manifest; not having a new car. The want will also be honored in that you will continue to want. This is why The Secret espouses visualizing having what it is that you want in the now. Act as though you already have it, for if you act like you don’t have it then that is what you will attract; not having it. If you want to lose weight, act as though you already have by tightening your belt a few minutes a day.

Marci Shimoff says that, “Feelings let us know what we are thinking.” But, if we pay very close attention we will find that the feeling arises before thought. Thought is designed to interpret what the feeling communicates and not the other way round as Shimoff suggests. Bryne says, “… thoughts are the primary cause of everything.” This is what I believed when I first began reading Seth, and because it didn’t work I drew Elias into my sphere of influence. This is where I learned that it is my beliefs that influence perception, and it is the belief that is expressed (what we do tells us the operative belief), not necessarily the belief thought about, that heavily influences what I create. The difference is subtle because it is thought that tells me what belief is operative in each moment if I am paying attention. Thought interprets, but is critical in the overall loop of creation. Since we create what we concentrate upon, Bryne is right when she says that moving our thought away from feeling bad and shifting it to something positive shifts our concentration, or in other words initiates a different belief.

If you’ve read the book or viewed the DVD then you may have noticed, as I did, that there is a repetitive reference to the universe. Most of Bryne’s sources use it as, “the universe will respond,” in reference to the LOA. It is not until page 164 that Bryne explains her meaning when she refers to the universe as providing. Until that point the reader can only assume that the universe is another term for God, and as such the power does not lie within us, but some nebulous force outside ourselves. Finally, though, on page 164 Bryne writes: “You are God in a physical body. You are spirit in the flesh. You are eternal life expressing itself as You. You are a cosmic being. You are all power. You are all wisdom. You are all intelligence. You are perfection. You are magnificence. You are the creator, and you are creating the creation of You on this planet.” I would have placed this at the beginning of the book, and Bryne and her sources might have been a little bit more forthright in calling a spade a spade. In other words, You are the Universe. >

Another aspect of the book that seemed unclear to me was Bryne’s insistence that we, “be grateful for what you have now.” I was never clear to whom or to what I was to be grateful to. For 164 pages the book made it seem as if some force (the universe) provided what I wanted. Was I to be grateful to the universe? It occurred to me that Bryne’s term, ‘gratitude’ may have been intended to be used like Elias’ term, ‘acceptance,’ which means non-judgment. I accept what is in each moment without judgment of what I created, or judgment of myself for creating it. The way Bryne used the term, ‘gratitude,’ reminded me of those folks who thank Jesus whenever something good happens to them, but then that was my reading of it. You may have perceived it differently.

In my perception the most valuable point made by the book is the idea that you have what you want already. I understand that this will be a difficult idea to accept for those not familiar with simultaneous time, but when you concentrate on already having what you want you project that drawing energy by way of creating a probability that what you want will be manifested. The visualization helps in creating that probability, but as the book says, the visualization is not about having it in the future, but rather having it now. Visualizing having it in the future will always keep it in the future. Bryne says, “everything you want is an inside game.” She’s right. Life is a you game and Bryne makes the point that we attend to our own joy first. This seems to go against a deeply rooted religious belief that espouses selflessness, but as many have found, unless you can fully love yourself you will not be able to fully love another.

This brings us to love. The Secret speaks a lot about love, but never defines it. The Eskimos have many words for snow, for there are so many variations of the stuff and it is so interwoven in their culture. We have one word for love, which is why some of us have a hard time using it in all situations. My love for my child is different than my love for my wife, which is different than my love for a friend. They way we define love forces me to say that I do not love everybody. There are those that I downright dislike. For me, Elias has the best definition of love. Love, he says, is knowing and appreciation. “I may express to you, the definition of love in terms of the truth - not the translation which you create within this physical dimension, associated with sexuality or emotion - is a genuine expression of knowing and appreciation, appreciation in genuineness which is the ultimate joyfulness: appreciation of self and appreciation of all other expressions of consciousness, all other essences, all other individuals within your dimension, and allowing yourself the openness to incorporate the capacity to share that appreciation and knowing of them.”

I know you as consciousness and within consciousness there is no separation. In this sense you are me as much as I am you. I appreciate the exploration you have undertaken in this physical focus as a human being, even though your exploration may represent everything I dislike. Love, as Elias defines it, is not dependent on personal preferences, so in this sense I may dislike you, but I love you. This seems like a good place to end.
Bill

An Inconvenient Truth

2007-02-27T11:02:00.000-05:00

Al Gore’s first book, Earth In The Balance: Ecology and The Human Spirit, came out in 1992. The evidence cited within its pages seemed irrefutable and turned me into a big Al Gore fan. Oddly enough it seemed the rest of the world took greater notice of the data than did the US. Much has changed in our world since then, but upon reflection the greatest change has occurred within me. How I responded to An Inconvenient Truth reflects not so much the changes our planet has gone through in the past fourteen years, as it does the changes I have gone through.

In session 1328 Elias responds to an individual inquiring about the environment and his business: Therefore, you yourself may incorporate actions in association with those preferences, but in genuine acceptance of the beliefs, you do not express a threat or a judgment in association with an individual that may be choosing to participate in actions which are not associated with your individual preferences.

In the exchange from which this blurb is lifted the questioner is an environmentalist. This is his preference, and as such he will act in alignment with his preference. He will recycle, use CFL bulbs, and do all he can to align with his beliefs about the environment. This is action in alignment with his beliefs. Elias tells him there is no right or wrong with his preferences, but goes on to talk about judgments and threats in association with those beliefs/preferences.

In 1992 I was quite familiar with Seth, but would not learn about Elias for another eight years. I was unaware of a key component of the Elias information known as Acceptance. I’ve written about it before on my blog, but my preferences regarding the environment are so strong I wanted to write about my reaction to Earth In The Balance before coming upon Elias, and compare it to my reaction to An Inconvenient Truth.

When reading Earth In The Balance I believed in absolutes and in particular I believed that I was right and you were wrong. I believed that there are ‘moral imperatives’ that if adhered to by all, then all would be hunky dory. If I saw a McDonald’s bag fly out of a car window I’d get angry at the perpetrator, spew a few expletives at him, and pat myself on the back for my righteousness. I was one of the good guys. I’d jot down the license number and report the infraction. It was my civic duty. I was doing my part. The real bad guys, though, were those mega corporations who defiled the planet for the sake of a quick buck. They were very easy to judge. You can all see the beliefs interwoven in my belief regarding the environment. To name a few there is:
1) Greed is bad.
2) Capitalism is bad.
3) Polluters are bad.
4) People are irresponsible.
5) Humans are destructive.
6) Earth cannot cope without my help.
7) Carbon based fuels suck.
8) Oil and coal industries are evil.

The list is almost endless, but you can get an idea that there are poles here, and when polarization occurs there will be friction and opposition. What I didn’t understand at the time of Earth In The Balance was that my truths were a paradox. They were true for me, but not true at the same time. I was seeing my beliefs as absolutes and when I did that it was so very easy to judge those who represented or held opposing beliefs. What do you do when someone opposes you? You dig in your heels and oppose back. What does holding a belief in the absolute do? It eliminates choice, and when there is no choice there is no freedom.

The idea is not to eliminate opposition. This is not a 21st century idea. In The Book, Alan Watts said: For the enemy/friends of man are his pruners. They prevent him from destroying himself by excess fertility, so that a person who dies of malaria or tuberculosis should be honored at least as much as one who has died for his country in battle. He has made room for the rest of us, and the bacteria which killed him should be saluted with proper chivalry as an honorable foe. The point is not that we should forthwith abandon penecillin or DDT: it is that we should fight to check the enemy, not to eliminate him. We must learn to include ourselves in the round of cooperations and conflicts, of symbiosis and preying, for a permanently victorious species destroys, not only itself, but all other life in its environment. (Pg. 76)

So how do I cooperate with that which I oppose? By understanding that there is not a truth and your truth and this is where I was when I saw An Inconvenient Truth a few weeks ago. There were no more bad guys. There was only me, and through extension, my environment. You are just as much my environment as is a plant and a rock, just as I am as much your environment. So when I oppose you I oppose myself. Cooperation, however, does not preclude action.

I do the same things now in my quest for a clean environment that I did fourteen years ago, but now I am no longer at war with myself. I will not throw my energy against what I oppose by way of judging, for I know that will lock what is not my preference into defensive mode. We have jointly created this environmental crisis for six billion different reasons. What I take away from it will not be exactly the same as any other human on the planet. Your response to An Inconvenient Truth is yours and yours alone. I leave you with one last quote from Alan Watts, one of my favorite philosophers:

“I repeat that the difficulty of understanding the organism/environment polarity is psychological. The history and the geographical distribution of the myth are uncertain, but for several thousand years we have been obsessed with the false humility - on the one hand, putting ourselves down as mere “creatures” who came into this world by the whim of God or the fluke of blind forces, and on the other, conceiving ourselves as separate personal egos fighting to control the physical world. We have lacked the real humility of recognizing that we are members of the biosphere, the “harmony of contained conflicts” in which we cannot exist at all without the cooperation of plants, insects, fish, cattle, and bacteria. In the same measure, we have lacked the proper self-respect of recognizing that I, the individual organism, am a structure of such fabulous ingenuity that it calls the whole universe into being. In the act of putting everything at a distance so as to describe and control it, we have orphaned ourselves both from the surrounding world and from our own bodies - leaving “I” as a discontented and alienated spook, anxious, guilty, unrelated, and alone.”

Bill Marshall

Getting Off My Own Hook

2007-01-30T10:47:00.000-05:00

After years of studying the Seth books and more recently the Elias Transcripts I have come to the conclusion that I have been hanging myself on my own hook by way of how I THINK about things. It was as if my thoughts had invisible hands that were able to put me on various hooks. One hook was called sadness, another was anger, a third was fear, a fourth was frustration. There were many others and they all had the names of the myriad emotions I experienced, including those ‘good’ emotions such as happiness, joy and tranquility. All of them had hooks, but I only noticed the ‘bad’ ones. And, of course, I didn’t put myself on those hooks; someone else did. Someone else put me on the ‘good’ hooks also, but I paid much more attention to those that brought me conflict.

1-If you insulted me you made me angry and hurt my feelings. 2-If you were late for an appointment you annoyed me. 3- If a plane I was on hit turbulence then the turbulence made me anxious. 4-If my child was late getting home and I worried, then it was my child that caused my worry. 5-I can’t be happy without you. 6-If I only had that new car I would be happy. 7-My world would be better if my kids would pick up after themselves. The list of people/things to blame is quite long; endless even, and our thinking is their progenitor.

Elias and Seth tell me I can only be a victim, if I believe I am a victim and that if I do believe it then I am a victim of myself and my beliefs. But what about my thinking? How does my thinking play a part in my victim game? Forget for a moment all the esoteric stuff that finds its way, by way of human interpretation, into all this create your own reality stuff. We love to complicate things, and I am finding that it really doesn’t have to be complicated. In this post I’m going to stick with the easy stuff; interpersonal relationships, as they comprise most of my daily experience.

Let’s look at number 1, YOU INSULTED ME AND HURT MY FEELINGS. Let’s say you’re my spouse and said to me, “You’re a lazy bum.” What is it about those words that hurt my feelings? The words themselves cannot hurt, but what I think about those words and what I think about myself can hurt. Am I a bum? No. Am I lazy? No. Then why are my feelings hurt? They are hurt because I am allowing my spouse to dictate my perception of myself. I have personalized her perception. And even if I was a lazy bum it would be my choice to be so. It would be my creation of me. It would be my thinking that says “being a lazy bum is not a good thing.” And the thinking follows my beliefs. If I fully accept (not judge) all of me then how can I be insulted? I am who I am. I am my own creation and there is no imperfection in it. I am the perfect ME, laziness, bumness and all. I can change it if I choose to do so, but I need not judge myself for what I have created.

Number 2 – YOU ANNOYED ME BY BEING LATE FOR YOUR APPOINTMENT WITH ME. All you did was be late. In the eastern world being late is the norm. Why was I annoyed? Because I have a belief that being on time is good and being late is bad. It is not your being late that annoyed me. It was my thinking, influenced by my beliefs, that got me agitated. You could be late for an appointment with Sally, who might not even notice that you were late. Her thinking, influenced by her beliefs, is different than my own. Neither Sally nor I have the market cornered on what might be acceptable regarding being on time. So, it is not being late that is the problem. It is my thinking that being on time is some form of absolute truth. When I automatically react with annoyance I can be sure that I am holding a belief as an absolute. This limits my choices and I respond automatically through my emotions. My emotions alert me that I am holding a belief in the absolute.

Number 3- TURBULENCE WHILE FLYING MAKES ME ANXIOUS. Ok, this may not have anything to do with interpersonal relationships, but let’s look at it anyway. What’s going on in the moment? Not much, just a few bumps. Nothing more than hitting a compression bump in the road while driving my car. Do I get anxious when I hit a compression bump in my car? NO. I get anxious in the plane because my thinking tells me I have no control over the situation. My thinking moves from the moment to the possibilities of the future, where no power to create exists. What if I was asleep during the turbulence? No anxiousness. My thinking creates my emotional state, not the turbulence. The turbulence is neutral.

Number 4- I WORRY WHEN MY CHILD IS LATE. Does my kid make me worry or does my own thinking, running its usual tapes, cause me to worry. My kid is out with his or her friends probably having a good time just as I did when I was their age. They are not worried about me because they are very good at being in the moment. When they are late does my thinking say, “Gee, they must be having a really good time.” No. My thinking says, “Something terrible must have happened. It’s time to worry.” I do not know that something terrible has happened and yet my thinking goes there. My thinking pulls me out of the present and what is happening to me in the present (maybe I’m sitting watching TV) and throws me into an unmade future. I can choose to not worry and still take action regarding my children’s whereabouts.

Number 5- I love this one. I CAN’T BE HAPPY WITHOUT YOU. Let’s face it, probably 50% of my day IS spent without you, and, truth be told, I’m quite happy without you. So, what’s the truth? It certainly isn’t that I can’t be happy without you, but that is what my thoughts tell me, and that is what puts me on my own hook. What if you really did leave me? What has changed? You’re simply not in my life for, what, five or six hours a day. Maybe your leaving creates some space for me to get to love me and to work on my thinking that says my happiness depends on someone else. The reality is that you have left. It is my creation/reality and is not wrong. I’m simply letting my thinking hang me up on the wall and have not accepted my reality.

Number 6- I’D BE HAPPY IF I HAD A NEW CAR. Also not a personal relationship, although many have strong relationships with their vehicles. I want, want, want….need, need, need. No! It’s thought telling me I want, want, want… need, need, need. If one believes Seth and Elias and the other ghosts then we need nothing. Our thinking creates the emotion of need. Try to feel needy without an adjoining emotion. Does a thing create happiness? Or, does my thinking, as it relates to things/people, give the illusion of happiness/unhappiness. If I create all of my reality and if I do it perfectly for me, then what I create is already perfect as it pertains to my value fulfillment and Intent of exploration as this focus of me. When I investigate my thoughts I often find it argues against what it is I have created.

Number 7- MY WORLD WOULD BE BETTER IF MY KIDS PICKED UP AFTER THEMSELVES. Hello parents; particularly you mothers out there. My kids don’t pick up after themselves and it doesn’t particularly bother me. It bothers my wife much more. If picking up after yourself is an absolute good (which it isn’t, and I don’t think anything is) then my wife and I would react to in the same way. So, if picking up after yourself is not an absolute good then what is it that creates a different emotional response in my wife and I. It’s that snake called thought. I really shouldn’t call thought a snake because of all the negative connotations attached to snake here in the western world. It the east it is often thought of as a symbol of wisdom.

Thought is a mechanism, a tool of consciousness that we have come to misuse to such a degree that we believe it actually creates our reality. I’m aware that there are differing perceptions of what thought actually does. Here I am adhering to the Elias description of thought and how I understand it. But, no matter how you define thought’s function, it is its interpretation of things that puts us on our respective hooks. I’m working at getting off my own hook and accepting the reality that I create.

Bill Marshall
author of The Forgotten Self and Gideon McGee's Dream

Goths Ain't So Bad

2006-12-01T10:23:00.000-05:00

Back in March I began a six part series that began with ,Women are from Venus, Men are from Mars. It had to do with what Elias refers to as our perceptual orientations. The three orientations (common-66%, soft-22% and intermediate-12%) are the lenses through which we process our reality. This post is a continuation of “Keeping Up With The Joneses,” and is intended to give us a better understanding of individual differences and why comparing keeps us from understanding our individual natures.

Let’s admit it. We all prefer to fit in. There isn’t just one Goth. They form a group known collectively as “The Goths.” They may be different than mainstream folks, but within their own group they are very similar. The same can be said for Vegans, Nudists, Vampires (yes, there is a group that considers themselves vampires) and every other group that hovers about the periphery of main stream culture. When an individual doesn’t feel they fit in because their penchant for comparing tells them they don’t fit in they will seek a way to feel accepted. They will either splinter off and draw like-minded folks to themselves or they will use their comparing skills and alter their individual nature. The trouble is, you can’t alter your orientation. Alright, alright!! For you Elias purists it’s not an absolute that you can’t change your orientation, but the VAST majority of us don’t. If you’re born of the common orientation it’s likely you will bring it to the grave with you.

I have the common orientation, which, in a way, makes it easier for me to navigate this reality. If none of us compared, and then judged the comparison, then all three orientations would sail on calm waters. But, we do, and so we don’t. We often don’t understand each other because we hold our own perceptions as truth and often don’t understand where someone else might be coming from. We ACT as if our perception is the only valid perception, which sets us up immediately to move into judgment mode, or what Elias refers to as non-acceptance. My perception is valid for me. Where I run into trouble is when I act as though your perception is wrong. Let me get this in bold letters: THERE AIN’T NO RIGHT PERCEPTION. There’s no right way to process this world. If you want to wear a checked shirt with stripped pants, it matters not that no one else is. If you snicker at someone wearing such an outfit and feel puffed-up in your Ann Taylor suit then you are comparing and using the comparison to inflate yourself. You’re in non-acceptance mode.

This is not to say that wearing designer clothes is any better or worse than wearing your older sister’s hand-me-downs that were purchased at K-Mart. It is the comparing and the non-acceptance of differences that stirs up the seas. The religious expression, “It is easier for a camel to pass through the eye of a needle than it is for a rich man to enter the kingdom of heaven,” had to be coined by a poor man. Rich/poor, black/white, fast/slow, big/little, saint/sinner are all a part of the duality of this reality. Where, along the continuum from rich to poor, is it best to be? Where, along the continuum from saint to sinner, is it best to be? Personally, I prefer to be left of center on this one. I find sinners far more interesting people. Not that being a saint is bad, mind you, it’s just my perception.

Where orientations become a problem is generally in relationships, although soft and intermediate can often feel like a square peg in a round hole if they are unaware of orientations in general and what specific orientation they use. For instance, if a common is married to an intermediate and they each believe their perception is the ‘correct’ perception then conflict is going to ensue and neither will understand the other. If we ceased comparing our perceptions for the purpose of either validating ourselves or diminishing another we’d meet with far fewer conflicts.

Another problem with comparing is our penchant for personalizing another’s perception. The Ann Taylor woman has a blind date with the checks and stripes guy. When they meet her brows lift and nostrils flare as she informs her date that stripes and checks don’t match. Now, if Mr. Stripes and Checks personalizes Ms. Ann Taylor’s perception he will see that he has made a grave mistake in fashion do’s and don’ts and will feel belittled. But, let’s say Mr. Stripes and Checks has been reading the Elias transcripts for a number of years and understands acceptance, beliefs, and perception. He doesn’t personalize Ms. Ann Taylor’s perception of him. He accepts himself and his choices just as he accepts his date’s choices and perception. “Ann,” he says. “I appreciate your perception regarding my striped shirt and checked pants. However, I like the way stripes and checks look together.”

What happened there was Mr. S&C accepted Ms. AT’s perception and accepted his own, both without judgment. He didn’t oppose her projected energy and so it was neutralized. He didn’t feel bad about himself, and Ms. AT likes that in a man. They had a nice dinner together and spent the night at a Motel 6. The moral of personalizing perception is, “Don’t allow someone else’s perception decide how you feel about yourself and you, too, might get lucky.”

Bill Marshall

Keeping Up With The Joneses

2006-11-22T11:02:00.000-05:00

How do you define YOU? Or, in other words, what allows you to set yourself apart from someone else. For instance, I know I’m short because of people who are tall. I know I’m in good shape because of people who are in bad shape. I know I have a big nose because of people who have a small nose. I know I am smart because of people who are not. I know I am getting old because of people who are still young. Short/tall, good/bad, big/small, smart/dumb, old/young are all part of a world that is, in part, shaped by duality. It’s part of the blueprint WE designed. We weren’t thrown into it as some Neroesque prank.

Duality is what allows us to consciously discern differences. This isn’t something that ghosts such as Elias and Seth have informed us of. We’ve known about it for thousands of years. As Lao Tsu put it: “When everyone knows beauty as beautiful, there is already ugliness; When everyone knows good as goodness, there is already evil. “To be” and “not to be” arise mutually; Difficult and easy are mutually realized; Long and short are mutually contrasted; High and low are mutually posited;...Before and after are in mutual sequence.”

In Aion, CG Jung wrote: “St. Thomas himself recalls the saying of Aristotle that "the thing is the whiter, the less it is mixed with black," without mentioning, however, that the reverse position: "the thing is the blacker, the less it is mixed with the white," not only has the same validity as the first but is also its logical equivalent. He might also have mentioned that not only darkness is known through light, but that, conversely, light is known through darkness.” And again: “Union of opposites is equivalent to unconsciousness, so far as human logic goes, for consciousness presupposes a differentiation into subject and object and a relation between them. Where there is no "other," or it does not yet exist, all possibility of consciousness ceases.”

What does this have to do with how you perceive yourself? Everything! Now, how you FEEL about yourself has to do with our near-neurotic penchant for comparing and then judging better or worse, good or bad based on the comparison. So, if this reality is our creation, then it seems to me that it is about time we learned how to drive the vehicle. You are your own creation. You’re not an accident, and if you’re not an accident then how do you go about accepting YOU, while at the same time being bathed in Duality? We STOP comparing! What we can’t do is stop our noticing differences. It’s part of our blueprint and allows for the illusion of separation and the establishment of individuality. It is the judgment (what Elias calls the belief system of Duplicity) that we place on the comparison that often brings us conflict. The judgment of differences brings mass conflict as well.

This is not to say that we do not continue to have opinions and preferences. I prefer vanilla ice cream, but don’t for a moment think my preference should be shared by everyone. If you prefer brussel sprout ice cream I notice the difference and the noticing ends there. I don’t go into ‘you-must-be-nuts’ mode. Do you? If so, then you are comparing and elevating your preference and your choice over that of another. Comparing also creates the illusion of happiness, or, if not happiness, then at least no conflict. This comes from the elevation of ourselves over others by way of the comparison. The opposite is also true. In the US we have an expression that epitomizes our proclivity to compare. “Keeping up with the Joneses,” has kept our focus outward and locked on ‘judgment.’ More is better than less. Big is better than small. Rich is better than poor. Without duality these differences could not be discerned. There may always be big and small, more and less, rich and poor. But as we learn to drive our vehicle we may find that one is not ‘better’ than the other. They are merely different aspects of the same coin.

Bill Marshall

The Serpent

2006-10-25T12:55:00.000-05:00

For many, “I am my brother’s keeper” is a strongly held religious belief. It has prodded governments to act ‘on behalf’ of its people and individuals to act ‘on behalf’ of the downtrodden. The concept seems noble at first glance, but the action it requires presupposes many other strongly held beliefs, the primary of which is that no one would choose to be downtrodden. Another is that we choose some things in our lives, but not all things. Another is that we can only control our destiny to a point and then ‘shit happens.’ But possibly the most strongly held belief is that we are nothing more than a happenstance meeting of a single sperm and egg and that what we see in the mirror represents the totality of who we are.

“I am my brother’s keeper” in actuality is a heavily camouflaged expression, for within its lofty idea is hidden a great serpent. It is called the serpent of discounting and it is rampant in the world. This serpent’s mantra is, “I can create your reality better than you can create your reality. I know what is best for you.” On its thousands of leathery scales are imprinted the words, “Thou Shalt” and “Thou Shalt Not.” The serpent of discounting was born during the age of Descartes and Newton. It was a time when man and the universe became a machine. As man forgot its connection to spirit the serpent grew larger and as the serpent grew larger mankind took on the mantle of victimhood. More victims required more brother’s keepers and like a snowball rolling down a steep hill the serpent grew to immense proportions.

It is the serpent, draped in “I am my brother’s keeper’s” clothes, that sent the US into Iraq and now keeps us there. The serpent screams, “We must save the Iraqis from the tyrant. They prefer democracy, for democracy is better than its alternative.” The serpent screams, “Leave now and there will be a bloodbath in Iraq. You must continue to be “your brother’s keeper.” “You know best what is good for Iraq.” As products of a mechanistic age we can be nothing less than victims, for we are the product of happenstance. We are thrown into this world, not by our own choice, but by the random joining of sperm and egg. We live in the world of The Forgotten Self, where religion has us aspiring to gain admission to a “Better Place,” which takes our eyes off of THIS place. We feel insubstantial, insignificant and lonely, yet there is a small voice within us that cries out, “You are so much more than you believe.”

In My post, “Probable Selves – Many Mansions” I proposed a wider view of who we are and suggested that our ‘purpose’ here is simply to experience. Two days ago our news services reported an incident on Italian TV between an Italian female representative in the Italian parliament and an Italian Imam. The woman decried that Muslim law does not require women to wear a scarf and that it represent the idea of separation. The Imam denounced her and virtually decreed a Fatwa on national Italian TV. The woman is now protected by body guards. Both the woman and the Imam were acting as “My Brother’s Keeper,” each deciding what was best for someone other than themselves. Both discounted the choices of others and both discounted each other. The mantra is, “I am right and you are wrong.”

On a grander scale the US is doing the same thing in Iraq. Because we see ourselves as poor, defenseless beings where bad things happen to good people we feel responsible for the welfare of the Iraqi people, thinking that if they had better sense they would not be killing each other. It is up to us wiser and more enlightened folks of the western world to show them the ‘Way.’ This thinking occurs in every aspect of our daily lives and is a direct result of thinking small about who we are as human beings. All of this is not to say that we should not care, or to offer help when it is asked for if it is our individual choice to do so. But, to unilaterally intervene on another’s behalf because we believe they have no choice but to be victims is an extreme case of non-acceptance. If you can accept a Muslim woman’s choice to wear head cover or a gay couple’s choice to marry then you are on the way to acceptance. If you believe you must intervene on behalf of another without being asked then you are in judgment mode. If you judge those that judge you are not being accepting. When you move into acceptance the world you create will respond in kind.

Bill Marshall