Questions and Answers – Number Two
I did your exercise on considering my limitations to an ideal life. However, I came up with answers like “I’m too critical” and “I’m too serious”. Are these beliefs that I have about my personality that I can change? I find it hard to change one’s personality. What would be a good way at looking at this situation?
How you express yourself changes in each moment. In one moment you may think you are acting “too serious” or “too critical” and in the next you may be feeling great joy. We tend to confuse habitual and sometimes unconscious responses and reactions with WHO WE ARE. Statements such as “too serious” are actually judgments we have against our expression in the moment.
Becoming aware of these tendencies in yourself is actually the first step toward changing them. The important thing to keep in mind here is that you are not actually trying to change your personality, but instead you are releasing beliefs that have been limiting the expression of your true
personality. Can you turn the judgment-oriented statements into statements describing how you DO want to be? Do you have a vision for yourself the way you would like to be? This vision is the expression of your personality, the “real you.”
If you can’t imagine what you would be like without those limitations, that’s okay too. You can begin the process just by sending yourself love and forgiveness to these areas of yourself. Monitor your thoughts during the day, and when you catch yourself being harsh or critical, take a breath and forgive yourself. Give yourself a mental hug, the hardest thing for many of us has been to forgive ourselves, often in areas where you would forgive a stranger without blinking an eye. Remember to praise yourself as well, when something goes right, give yourself a pat on the back for it.
As you get used to releasing these judgments, you’ll be making lots of space for your real personality to shine through unimpeded.
One of the abiding problems of my life has been that I am fearless. This has taken me into many situations I would have been better off without. Sometimes fear prevents foolhardiness -no?
It sounds like there are some judgements here about experiences that you have had in the past. It’s important to remember that you chose these experiences for a reason, and forgive and love yourself in those areas where they were unhappy or turned out less than what you thought they would.
Consider this, had you been afraid of these experiences, or if you had chosen to focus on being afraid of them, rather than experiencing them, right now you would still be at the stage of asking yourself “What if I…..?” You have already chosen to have the experiences, you can now discern from them which parts resonated with you and which parts did not. Regret is a form of self punishment, it’s a way of beating yourself up for something that doesn’t exist anymore. Tell yourself that it’s okay to love those parts of yourself, to heal old wounds and move into the present.
Sometimes we create situations to provide ourselves with a contrast. That is, if we’re unclear about what we really want, we may create a situation that will offer us some elements of what we like and some of which we may not resonate with. This kind of experience will help us fine tune our ability to really know, very specifically, what we DO want.
One of the areas that I find most challenging is sustaining the ability to follow through with new habits and having these new ways of thinking stay with me. I seem to always fall back to the old ways and thought patterns after “the new” has worn off. For me I think that is one of the keys that might unlock the door to very real creation. Allowing myself to create “a new” and have that sense of “where I am” to be real. Maybe the old values that I have constructed about “change” are holding me in. Maybe I need to know and accept the fact that change is good, that change will happen (even when my new habits become old), and know that I have the power to make the life I want.
Beliefs have a kind of momentum attached to them, and changing them takes a lot of conscious effort at first, and then becomes easier as you go along. Imagine a car on the highway. You are driving at 70 mph and want to make a 90 degree turn, you have to slow the car down first, and then after making the turn build up speed in the new direction. Our thoughts can be the same way. When you change your beliefs, there is a period of uncertainty at first that is equivalent to the car slowing down, you hold your focus and the car makes it’s turn, finally you begin to think in terms of the new belief and the old one fades away into the distance.
Don’t be critical of yourself when you catch yourself thinking in old patterns, just recognize them for what they are and say: “I’m not choosing that anymore.” Then re-focus yourself on your new beliefs. (If you’re busy feeling bad about not focusing on the new beliefs, you’re STILL not focusing on the new beliefs! <grin>)
This is actually part of the process of “becoming conscious” and then consciously directing your energy, but it IS a process. You may want to think of this process like any other thing you want to remember. Leave notes for yourself to “pay attention” or to ask yourself “what are you focusing on right now.” You may even consider carrying a meaningful, yet out of the ordinary object around in your pocket to remind you of your new focus. Whatever works! <grin>
I’m confused. After Lesson 4, where we can predict the future and still create our own reality and change the reality of our lives. How do the two work together? Because if we can predict the future, that means that the reality was always there and that you are following your plan and hence not creating it.
Ahh, but who is it that is writing YOUR plan? From a conscious creation perspective YOU are. As the writer of your own story, you have the power to change and edit it as you go along. Any path you choose is valid, but once you are aware that the choice is yours, it’s almost inconceivable not to choose from a perspective of love, which is of course your own greatest happiness and fulfillment.
Think of it this way. Everything already exists in the “non-physical” – what physicists would consider a wave form instead of a solidified particle. So every “future” probability already exists, yet you get to choose the one that YOU want to experience in physical reality.
When you’re trying to predict the future, you’re trying to see what’s “going to” happen, and any visions or predictions are only valid from the trajectory of your CURRENT perspective. If you change your focus, change your beliefs, change your mind, you will experience a different future probability. Many popular predictions today are based in fear, and are most helpful when used as tools to becoming aware of what we ARE resonating with, so that we can then make a more conscious decision of what we DO want.
I’ve just read Lesson 4 and I have some concerns about the material. I’m not sure if this interpretation is valid (and I’m sure you’ll correct me), but if we can’t rely on channeled information being accurate (correct?) in our own reality, how on earth can we begin to distinguish between genuine material and that produced by charlatans for whatever reason (wealth, power, etc). Perhaps it’s just that I’m not ready for metaphysics!
The only answer here is that you have to trust YOURSELF. Channeled material isn’t any more “objectively valid” than an article in a newspaper, a story on the evening news, advice from your mother, or lessons in an online class! <grin> If the information you’re hearing speaks to you, then that’s the ultimate test of it’s “validity.”
As you examine different channeled pieces, you can start looking past the words to the “feel” or deep meaning behind all the words. If it resonates with you, that’s great! If it doesn’t, simply set it aside. Don’t be overly concerned with another person’s reasons for channeling the information, as that can be more of a distraction from listening the voice of your OWN inner wisdom, and ultimately may not have anything to do with the “quality” of the information received.
You may want to think of channeled material, or ANY information in physical reality, as a reflection of you, or as a message to yourself. What are you telling yourself right now? And what message is your inner self trying to get through to you? It can take the form of a billboard, a song on the radio, or the more formal shape of channeled material or a book even.
If you are still a little concerned, we suggest that you may want to try your OWN hand at automatic writing, for instance, in order to get more clear on the whole idea of what channeling really means.
In lesson #4, you state the example of looking for a lost object several times and then finding it in the same place you’ve searched for it before, and then said to consider that it wasn’t there the previous times you checked. This happened to me in a store; I went to look for an item, couldn’t find it, then I went and got the store owner who went back with me and then we saw rows and rows of this item, where a few minutes before I swore there were none! I can’t imagine that I missed seeing all of them. My question: Why weren’t the items there before?
The more conscious we become, and the more we start to see that physical reality isn’t as linear as we used to assume, and the more these kinds of “probability shifts” become a part of our experience. We are used to rationalizing this kind of thing away by doubting what we initially saw, “Oh, I must have been mistaken.” We do this because we are used to choosing the existing “rules” of reality over what we have experienced, especially when what we KNOW we have experienced doesn’t fit into the old rules!
From a conscious creation perspective, one way your experience might have come about is that you may have been looking for what you wanted on the shelves, and didn’t see any. But you were determined to have what you wanted, so you switched to a probability where they actually had what you wanted. Why weren’t the items there before? To give you a chance to create them!
The other day, John was at the grocery store and the bread and rolls shelves were almost completely bare, as the next day was when the new stock came in. He was looking for some oversized hamburger buns and was disappointed. But he just walked on, picking up some other things he wanted. In the deli section, he just glanced at the shelves next to him and there was one package of oversized hamburger buns waiting just for him!
You CAN have exactly what you want, just not always in the way you may expect it to come! <grin>
I have read a lot of the Seth material and am familiar with the general concept of reality creation. The assignment for Lesson 3 has been particularly challenging for me. The thing is this – If any of my friends quoted the limitations that I have set down as my own I would be able to reassure them and encourage them that they were wonderful human beings who were capable and powerful. How it that we are kinder to other people, even strangers than we are to ourselves? When do we learn this? I’m asking because I teach a junior school and now I’m very much aware of how important our interactions are in helping to create self image. I enjoy the continuous self dialogue and notice that at every moment I have to reassure and love my self in response to my many judgements against myself.
A lot of this has to do with patterns of behavior that have become commonplace in our culture – many times we have long-held and unconscious judgments against not only recognizing our own skills, talents, and validity, but against FEELING good and confident about ourselves. You may have grown up with some of these patterns, having a parent or parents that believed they had to sacrifice their own happiness for the sake of the family. Another common one is in the Christian faith, “Jesus died on the cross for our sins.” These are two examples, if you look around you will probably find more.
An important question to ask is: “How do you feel about yourself in general?” Very often we criticize ourselves over small things because there’s an underlying belief like “I’m no good,” or “I’m a failure.” Be aware of this type of criticism from yourself, learn to recognize that voice so that you can send it love and forgiveness.
It sounds like you’re already on the road here with reminding yourself to love and reassure yourself – good job! Like we mentioned before, becoming conscious and choosing a new path or a new attitude or way of being is a process. Instead of a well-worn road that you can travel almost without thinking, you’re clearing a new path for yourself.
I have a question, when I have read some lessons, I thought you were asserting the following statement: “The reality is only what you create” – Wouldn’t this means that other people doesn’t exists? That all the people, all the world, all is only a creation of myself? In this case, from your point of view, I don’t exist, it’s just a part of yourself telling yourself something, in my point of view, you don’t exist, as no one does, and I’m just talking to a deep part of myself, via the email, which is only a way made by myself to comunicate with my deep “me”. What do you think about this?
One of the most important parts of becoming a conscious creator is realizing that there is more to “life” than just physical reality. We are not creatures born of physical reality, we simply ARE. We are love… we are energy… we are consciousness.. and yet we are still more than that. We are used to identifying ourselves with our physical forms since that has been our focus for so long, but truly, we are energy essences that have chosen to focus in physical reality. Each of us exists as an energy essence, regardless of whether or not we choose to incarnate physically. Remember that we are inherently telepathic and that most communication actually happens more on the telepathic level than on the physical level with word and image exchanges, as we usually assume.
As we incarnate physically, we translate a “perspective” of our energy essence into physical reality based on what we are interested in experiencing. Using the ideas of separation, which is part of the illusion of physical reality, we can interact with “others” here. We create “translations” of the energy essence of “other people”, constructing their physical forms according to our interpretation of their energy, energy which exists, in essence, in non-physical form, and independently of our “personal” creation.
When we vibrate with a certain set of beliefs, whether we’re conscious or unconscious of them, we send out a vibration which attracts others of like vibration. This occurs whether we’re in physical reality or in a non-physical realm (as far as we know… so far <grin>) – it’s the law of attraction – like attracts like. So, while others DO exist, their physical constructs are your interpretations of their energy, energy which you attracted into your experience by your focus or vibration.
And on the paradoxical level, while we are all individuals, we are also all ONE, as separation is an illusion. Perfectly clear, right?
I have a question on power. All my life, I have done what is right and good (for the most part anyway) and I tend to be taken advantage of all the time. For instance, in my job situations, once I was fired for being abused by my ex-husband. I came into work each day cheery, but with various bruises, etc. Another time, I was actually fired for answering the phone incorrectly. These were when I was much younger, but the pattern seems to repeat itself. Just last year, I was laid off for being TOO NICE to the psychiatric patients where I was a receptionist. I looked at each of them as an extension of myself and loved each of them unconditionally. I seem to be taken advantage of alot and I am sure some of this is due to the fact I was raised in the south and was taught if you don’t have something nice to say, then don’t say it 🙂 I am a very nice and compassionate person, so why do these things happen to me? Believe me, I have done lots of internal work, but cant come up with an answer to this one?
And in a follow up email:
Hmmm, an “ah-ha” moment just occurred to me. Is it possible that I see myself as a victim and therefore that is what I manifest in my life? This would explain SOME of the circumstances I explained in my previous email to you, but not all of them. Hmmm…..If this is the case, how to give myself back the power?
You get what you “vibrate” – that is, you get back a match to the beliefs that you are currently resonating with. This is the essence behind the golden rule – “treat others as you would have them treat you” – but we often confuse the vibration or unconscious beliefs we are resonating with our carefully controlled actions that are fundamentally designed to manipulate a certain response out of others, and may not be accurate representations or expressions of what we’re really feeling or how we’re focusing. (We’re not judging this, we’re just trying to state this as clearly as possible.) But luckily, “getting what we vibrate” IS a lot more accurate.
The question to ask yourself, as you have already done, is “what do I really believe about myself and my life?” Once we start to see our own experiences as more than just “the way life is” or “the way people are” we can start seeing them as a great mirror for who we are… and then of course, we can start choosing to believe what we want about who we are, create a new blueprint for ourselves.
You said you were “very nice and compassionate” – the universe doesn’t respond to what we would consider “good behavior” or politeness, but to our beliefs and vibrations about them. You also said you can love others unconditionally, can you also love yourself unconditionally, in times when you may not be genuinely feeling “nice and compassionate” and express those other parts of yourself?
I’m comfortable with the fact that I can create anything if I truly believe in it when it comes to objects and events, but what about humans. What if I want to create Marilyn Monroe in front of me? While I do agree that even the most absurd realities can be experienced, no matter how far away from our current belief system, my question is really about the relationship between creation and human consciousness.
It is easy to fall into a solipsist viewpoint and see one’s self as the only real point of awareness, while everything else is just our creation, even other people. On the other hand, a more tricky view is seeing every person as a point of awareness that can create. If this is so, how do all these points of consciousness interact. I can understand “co-creation”, but what happens if there are two who are creating opposite realities. Does one power over the other? Perhaps they will each experience their own reality, but if that reality included the other creator, will their both of their conciousnesses be present in both realities or just one? Since I only feel present in one physical reality, it’s hard to explain. Are some people only illusions that we’ve created, while others, with whom we share a reality, actually exist with a human consciousness?
Physical reality is a camouflage reality, an illusion. It’s an interpretation of energy that exists in infinity, regardless of physical reality. A person is a translation of “human consciousness” in the same way that a dog is a translation of “dog consciousness” – the label ‘human’ starts to break down a little here.
Earlier, we answered the question of how we create interpretations of essence energy as form in physical reality. Everything, whether human or whether a rock, is made up of energy, and is conscious, although most likely not in the way we’re used to thinking of “consciousness”. Every cell in your body is also conscious in its own way and it communicates with every other part of your body as well. We explained earlier that we, as our cells are, are always in ‘telepathic’ communication with each other. This is how we coordinate our interactions. And we must also consider that in physical reality, we work with translations of essence energies as well as probabilities. So the probability that I choose to experience where a store clerk is polite to me, may not be the probability that the store clerk chooses to experience, and yet each is a translation of their essence energy.
This is not necessarily an easy concept, but it’s a good one! The universe springs from and is based in Absolute Freedom, and so are we. You can feel the truth in that statement – everything else is just an explanation of how that’s possible.
I have a pretty plain question, which might have an extraordinary answer it is this: Is there any Real, standardized method or way of interpreting reality.
If you look at religions and Thought Matrixes, as way’s or methods, for example the psychological view, scientific, religious exct..
I find myself in what i’f learned is the physical reality, but yet i am from a much less dense origin/consciousness. Communicating viewpoints to others in more limited realities can grant me labels such as mentally ill, delusional and so forth(at the same time I might have miraculous understandings), The same as with these concepts of paradoxes connection and infinite posibilities..linear minds can’t grasp, the same with TimeLessNess.(which we are in all the time)
Don’t you think you’f got a-nuf knowledge to move on and not incarnate here again, and is physical death the only way out?
You’ve communicated many ideas here. One of the common assertions of what physical reality is all about is that it’s some kind of school where we must learn the lessons in order to graduate and move on. That assertion is valid unto itself, but isn’t necessarily aligned with the idea of conscious creation – it seems that it may be more a result of seeing physical reality is a place of pain and suffering and a “school of hard knocks”.
First, we CHOOSE to come to physical reality because of what we’re interested in experiencing (this will vary WILDLY from person to person, naturally.) We can’t speak for anyone else, but one of the “reasons” we believe we’re here (John and Kristen) is to be IN physical reality and enjoy it fully, while expanding beyond the duality inherent in the system here. That is, being IN the world but not of it. In other words, being conscious creators – identifying ourselves with not JUST the physically focused self but with the non-physical AS WELL, achieving the integration of those two states CONSCIOUSLY. In that way, physical reality becomes not a harsh schoolhouse, but an artist’s canvas!
End Questions and Answers Part Two