July 2006 - Posts

MEMORY: "I Swear, You Never Told Me That!"
Have you ever been accused or have you accused others of having a bad memory? Of course you have. We all remember some things and not others. Some of us are good with names (I’m not one of them), while others are good with numbers (I’m not one of them either). The opposite of remembering is forgetting, and this is where the problem lies. We believe that if we don’t remember something that we have experienced it, but forgot. We’ve all heard the words, “you never told me that.” My wife says it a lot to me. I used to argue with her about whether I said or didn’t say something until I understood the Elias information.

Current scientific thinking holds that memory is stored in the brain, and more recently, through the work of Dr. Candace Pert (Molecules of Emotion), that memory courses through the body in our endocrine system. It’s all very scientific and is driven by science’s belief that consciousness is an epiphenomenon of matter (created by matter). You know the thinking; without a brain there is no consciousness. It’s difficult to explain out-of-body experiences –of which millions are reported –with that kind of rigid belief. Many hold it as a truth in absolute.

Keeping in mind that the brain is a conduit of consciousness, but does not generate consciousness, let’s take a look at memory. What is crucial to memory is our attention, AND ATTENTION IS NOT THOUGHT. Thought translates the myriad forms of communication we constantly provide ourselves with. Attention may move to thought, but attention is not directed by thought. So, if attention is not thought, nor is it directed by thought, then what is it? YOU are your attention. As Elias puts it: “Attention is what you are, who you are and attention is what generates you as being you.”

What does this all mean as it pertains to memory? I’ll keep it simple by trying to avoid in depth information about our various aspects and keep it focused on attention only. Let’s look at an example. Two months ago Harry and Lois went out for the evening to see the movie, What The Bleep Do We Know: Down The Rabbit Hole. Jumping to the present, Harry and Lois are sitting at the dinner table and Lois begins discussing the movie. She notices a puzzled look on Harry’s face and questions him about it. “I never saw that movie,” Harry tells her. “O course you did,” Lois says. “We saw it together two months ago. How can you possibly not remember?” An argument ensues, with Harry stuck to his position and thinking Lois is hallucinating, and Lois is stuck to her position and thinking Harry is getting senile. So, Who’s right?

Both Harry and Lois are right. If you recall from past posts, what we interact with is each other’s energy which we create into physical manifestation through our perception. That energy is vast and our attention can be elsewhere while our partner is configuring our energy. Part of Harry’s energy is at the movies (the part he lends to Lois to create as she wishes), but his attention (Harry himself) is not. Lois was interacting with Harry’s energy, but not Harry’s attention. What is attention? Attention is You.

Briefly, a point about aspects. In the above example it may also have been that Harry exchanged primary aspects during the time he went to the movies with Lois and later changed back again. The memory is held with the aspect that went to the movies and is not held in objective awareness by the aspect that was replaced. The memory is available in our subjective awareness, for nothing is hidden from us. One can think of aspects the way we think of the various personas we wear throughout the day. We have one persona we wear with friends, another in dealing with our children, another when involved with authority figures, etc. The point of all this is that we are infinitely larger than we have heretofore ever imagined. Begin believing that and your reality will respond in kind.

This is what Elias has to say about memory and simultaneous time (I’ve paraphrased for ease of understanding): There is no need, so to speak, for memory or the holding of memory. The action of memory is not stored. The action that you hold in memory is occurring presently. Therefore, it is merely an action of turning attention within links of consciousness to the action which is occurring presently. The action of memory can be likened to you and the action of a strobe light. The strobe continues to blink even when you turn your eyes away from it. Even when you turn your eyes back to the strobe, thereby giving it your attention, you understand it was blinking even when your eyes were cast aside. This is the key point for understanding in all that you are creating and all that you are widening your awareness to. The element of attention is what turns your reality. Where you place your attention is where you shall place your interaction of perception, and this creates your reality.
Bill Marshall

All of the information in this blog is in fictional form in my book, The Forgotten Self (US) (UK)
MEMORY: "I Swear, You Never Told Me That!"
Have you ever been accused or have you accused others of having a bad memory? Of course you have. We all remember some things and not others. Some of us are good with names (I’m not one of them), while others are good with numbers (I’m not one of them either). The opposite of remembering is forgetting, and this is where the problem lies. We believe that if we don’t remember something that we have experienced it, but forgot. We’ve all heard the words, “you never told me that.” My wife says it a lot to me. I used to argue with her about whether I said or didn’t say something until I understood the Elias information.

Current scientific thinking holds that memory is stored in the brain, and more recently, through the work of Dr. Candace Pert (Molecules of Emotion), that memory courses through the body in our endocrine system. It’s all very scientific and is driven by science’s belief that consciousness is an epiphenomenon of matter (created by matter). You know the thinking; without a brain there is no consciousness. It’s difficult to explain out-of-body experiences –of which millions are reported –with that kind of rigid belief. Many hold it as a truth in absolute.

Keeping in mind that the brain is a conduit of consciousness, but does not generate consciousness, let’s take a look at memory. What is crucial to memory is our attention, AND ATTENTION IS NOT THOUGHT. Thought translates the myriad forms of communication we constantly provide ourselves with. Attention may move to thought, but attention is not directed by thought. So, if attention is not thought, nor is it directed by thought, then what is it? YOU are your attention. As Elias puts it: “Attention is what you are, who you are and attention is what generates you as being you.”

What does this all mean as it pertains to memory? I’ll keep it simple by trying to avoid in depth information about our various aspects and keep it focused on attention only. Let’s look at an example. Two months ago Harry and Lois went out for the evening to see the movie, What The Bleep Do We Know: Down The Rabbit Hole. Jumping to the present, Harry and Lois are sitting at the dinner table and Lois begins discussing the movie. She notices a puzzled look on Harry’s face and questions him about it. “I never saw that movie,” Harry tells her. “O course you did,” Lois says. “We saw it together two months ago. How can you possibly not remember?” An argument ensues, with Harry stuck to his position and thinking Lois is hallucinating, and Lois is stuck to her position and thinking Harry is getting senile. So, Who’s right?

Both Harry and Lois are right. If you recall from past posts, what we interact with is each other’s energy which we create into physical manifestation through our perception. That energy is vast and our attention can be elsewhere while our partner is configuring our energy. Part of Harry’s energy is at the movies (the part he lends to Lois to create as she wishes), but his attention (Harry himself) is not. Lois was interacting with Harry’s energy, but not Harry’s attention. What is attention? Attention is You.

Briefly, a point about aspects. In the above example it may also have been that Harry exchanged primary aspects during the time he went to the movies with Lois and later changed back again. The memory is held with the aspect that went to the movies and is not held in objective awareness by the aspect that was replaced. The memory is available in our subjective awareness, for nothing is hidden from us. One can think of aspects the way we think of the various personas we wear throughout the day. We have one persona we wear with friends, another in dealing with our children, another when involved with authority figures, etc. The point of all this is that we are infinitely larger than we have heretofore ever imagined. Begin believing that and your reality will respond in kind.

This is what Elias has to say about memory and simultaneous time (I’ve paraphrased for ease of understanding): There is no need, so to speak, for memory or the holding of memory. The action of memory is not stored. The action that you hold in memory is occurring presently. Therefore, it is merely an action of turning attention within links of consciousness to the action which is occurring presently. The action of memory can be likened to you and the action of a strobe light. The strobe continues to blink even when you turn your eyes away from it. Even when you turn your eyes back to the strobe, thereby giving it your attention, you understand it was blinking even when your eyes were cast aside. This is the key point for understanding in all that you are creating and all that you are widening your awareness to. The element of attention is what turns your reality. Where you place your attention is where you shall place your interaction of perception, and this creates your reality.
Bill Marshall

All of the information in this blog is in fictional form in my book, The Forgotten Self (US) (UK)
ACCEPTANCE: It Just Is

Several posts ago I wrote about Acceptance. It is such a critical action that it needs more attention. In session 164 of the Elias transcripts Elias says this about Acceptance:

“Acceptance, within your language, should be the largest word that you possess, encompassing more letters than any other word within your language. It is the largest and most difficult concept for you each to be accomplishing. You are taught to not be accepting. Therefore, you automatically are not. You also hold the duplicity of self, which reinforces non-acceptance of self. Therefore, how may you be accepting of another?”

In session 390 Elias says:

“Holding the remembrance and acceptance of belief systems are two of the base elements of this shift in consciousness, which allows you to widen your awareness and subsequently allows you to be accomplishing your creativity more fully and realizing your abilities more fully.”

Belief systems and the individual aspects each system contains are not to be eliminated, but rather, they are to be accepted. Acceptance does not mean eliminating beliefs, for beliefs cannot be eliminated. They are an integral part of the blueprint of this reality. Acceptance is the absence of judgment and includes a lack of expectation. Tolerance, on the other hand, camouflages itself as something positive and always includes expectation and anticipation. With Acceptance Elias uses the expression “It Matters Not.” With tolerance we tell ourselves it does matter. I’ll tolerate your dog barking at all hours of the night, but only for so long. There is usually a time element to our tolerance because what we are tolerating has not been accepted.

Tolerance is not bad. It is also not good. To see it as such is another form of non-acceptance. Let’s look at a brief example of tolerance to see how it disguises itself. The Anti-Defamation League’s mission is to stop the defamation of the Jewish people and to secure justice and fair treatment for all citizens alike. On the surface most of us would agree that this is a “good” and “worthy” mission. It aligns with our intents and our preferences and desires. But, if this was truly a statement of Acceptance then the fair treatment of all citizens would include those who defame the Jewish people. Acceptance does not mean you have to like anti-Semites or bigots or terrorists or anything else we place on the “bad” side of the ledger. Acceptance also does not mean non-action. It simply means non-judgment. The bigots and racists of the world are no more, nor are they any less acceptable than those we place on the “good” side of the ledger. Both good and bad are ethical judgments, heavily influenced by the religious belief system and reside in the web-like belief system called mirror expression of ourselves.

In session 510 Elias says: “Those areas, those behaviors, those expressions that you deem within yourself to be acceptable and right and good, those are mirrored in your expressions of tolerance. Those areas of self that you deem to be the “dark side” of yourselves, those are unacceptable and not tolerated, and these are expressed outwardly to other individuals in an expression of a lack of tolerance.”

When Elias says, “It Matters Not,” non-Elias readers have a tendency to equate those words with “nothing matters.” This is not what Elias is intending when using the expression, “It Matters Not.” I understand, however, the potential for confusion. I’ve taken to using the expression, “It Just Is,” and I’ve noticed others using it as well. I was with a friend the other day and he bumped into an old friend of his. My friend’s friend was about 50 years old and told my friend that he just had a new baby. When my friend asked how he felt about it he shrugged his shoulders and said, “Hey, it just is.” To him it wasn’t good and it wasn’t bad. It was a “Just Is” kind of thing. It Mattered Not.

Each one of us is unique. There is no other exactly the same throughout all realities and all dimensions of consciousness. This being the case then why should we ever compare ourselves to anyone else or demand that others change in order to be more in alignment with our own preferences. Everyone is on their own path. Our action of comparing actually discounts us. Through Acceptance we let go of the action of comparing. There is nothing about yourself or your reality that is broken, and this includes other individuals, situations, circumstances, actions, feelings, emotions and thoughts. It is only our non-acceptance and our constant penchant for focusing our attention outside ourselves that causes us to label some things as good and some things as bad. This being the case, there is nothing within our reality that needs to be fixed, and this leads to the realization that there are no mistakes or victims. Each and every action by yourself and others has a purpose. We may not hold an objective understanding of all these actions, but they all occur within our subjective agreements.

With this in mind, “It Matters Not,” what anyone else does. What matters is how we receive their projected energy which we create through our perception into physical manifestations. The important factor is how YOU take in that energy and that you recognize that within each moment you have choices. No other individual creates your reality. There is no co-creation. You create your choices, your responses, your emotions, and your thoughts. We always hold the choice of how we will configure energy that is projected toward us. Acceptance of ourselves and of our belief systems are critical to our ability to create what we want.
Bill Marshall

Check out The Forgotten Self and my first book, Gideon McGee’s Dream.
ACCEPTANCE: It Just Is

Several posts ago I wrote about Acceptance. It is such a critical action that it needs more attention. In session 164 of the Elias transcripts Elias says this about Acceptance:

“Acceptance, within your language, should be the largest word that you possess, encompassing more letters than any other word within your language. It is the largest and most difficult concept for you each to be accomplishing. You are taught to not be accepting. Therefore, you automatically are not. You also hold the duplicity of self, which reinforces non-acceptance of self. Therefore, how may you be accepting of another?”

In session 390 Elias says:

“Holding the remembrance and acceptance of belief systems are two of the base elements of this shift in consciousness, which allows you to widen your awareness and subsequently allows you to be accomplishing your creativity more fully and realizing your abilities more fully.”

Belief systems and the individual aspects each system contains are not to be eliminated, but rather, they are to be accepted. Acceptance does not mean eliminating beliefs, for beliefs cannot be eliminated. They are an integral part of the blueprint of this reality. Acceptance is the absence of judgment and includes a lack of expectation. Tolerance, on the other hand, camouflages itself as something positive and always includes expectation and anticipation. With Acceptance Elias uses the expression “It Matters Not.” With tolerance we tell ourselves it does matter. I’ll tolerate your dog barking at all hours of the night, but only for so long. There is usually a time element to our tolerance because what we are tolerating has not been accepted.

Tolerance is not bad. It is also not good. To see it as such is another form of non-acceptance. Let’s look at a brief example of tolerance to see how it disguises itself. The Anti-Defamation League’s mission is to stop the defamation of the Jewish people and to secure justice and fair treatment for all citizens alike. On the surface most of us would agree that this is a “good” and “worthy” mission. It aligns with our intents and our preferences and desires. But, if this was truly a statement of Acceptance then the fair treatment of all citizens would include those who defame the Jewish people. Acceptance does not mean you have to like anti-Semites or bigots or terrorists or anything else we place on the “bad” side of the ledger. Acceptance also does not mean non-action. It simply means non-judgment. The bigots and racists of the world are no more, nor are they any less acceptable than those we place on the “good” side of the ledger. Both good and bad are ethical judgments, heavily influenced by the religious belief system and reside in the web-like belief system called mirror expression of ourselves.

In session 510 Elias says: “Those areas, those behaviors, those expressions that you deem within yourself to be acceptable and right and good, those are mirrored in your expressions of tolerance. Those areas of self that you deem to be the “dark side” of yourselves, those are unacceptable and not tolerated, and these are expressed outwardly to other individuals in an expression of a lack of tolerance.”

When Elias says, “It Matters Not,” non-Elias readers have a tendency to equate those words with “nothing matters.” This is not what Elias is intending when using the expression, “It Matters Not.” I understand, however, the potential for confusion. I’ve taken to using the expression, “It Just Is,” and I’ve noticed others using it as well. I was with a friend the other day and he bumped into an old friend of his. My friend’s friend was about 50 years old and told my friend that he just had a new baby. When my friend asked how he felt about it he shrugged his shoulders and said, “Hey, it just is.” To him it wasn’t good and it wasn’t bad. It was a “Just Is” kind of thing. It Mattered Not.

Each one of us is unique. There is no other exactly the same throughout all realities and all dimensions of consciousness. This being the case then why should we ever compare ourselves to anyone else or demand that others change in order to be more in alignment with our own preferences. Everyone is on their own path. Our action of comparing actually discounts us. Through Acceptance we let go of the action of comparing. There is nothing about yourself or your reality that is broken, and this includes other individuals, situations, circumstances, actions, feelings, emotions and thoughts. It is only our non-acceptance and our constant penchant for focusing our attention outside ourselves that causes us to label some things as good and some things as bad. This being the case, there is nothing within our reality that needs to be fixed, and this leads to the realization that there are no mistakes or victims. Each and every action by yourself and others has a purpose. We may not hold an objective understanding of all these actions, but they all occur within our subjective agreements.

With this in mind, “It Matters Not,” what anyone else does. What matters is how we receive their projected energy which we create through our perception into physical manifestations. The important factor is how YOU take in that energy and that you recognize that within each moment you have choices. No other individual creates your reality. There is no co-creation. You create your choices, your responses, your emotions, and your thoughts. We always hold the choice of how we will configure energy that is projected toward us. Acceptance of ourselves and of our belief systems are critical to our ability to create what we want.
Bill Marshall

Check out The Forgotten Self and my first book, Gideon McGee’s Dream.
THE UNDERDOG
Until Seth and then Elias came on to the scene I had always been the champion of the underdog. I still root for the underdog on the fields of play. I’ve been athletic and popular throughout my life, seemingly fitting in to many diverse groups. That may be because of my political focus. But, I have always had a “thing” about protecting the underdog from mistreatment by the topdog.

Henry was a bespectacled eight-year-old introvert, who didn’t know the fat end of a bat from the grip. He was tormented constantly by the other kids. What made it worse for Henry was that no matter what anyone did or said to him, he never cried. No one could get Henry to shed a tear and I can tell you they tried quite hard. I wouldn’t hang out with Henry for fear of my own ostracism, but I was always friendly to him.

One day the boys in my class were playing stickball during recess on the P.S. #30’s asphalt playground. Henry was assigned the catcher’s position as this was the least glamorous of all the positions in our eight-year-old minds. (Right field is now the worst). One of the bigger boys came up to the plate and gave the broom handle bat a mighty swing. Henry was too close and caught the bat, not the ball, with the side of his head. The pain was enough to get Henry to loose a torrent of tears and off he ran into the school. While the other kids laughed, I ran after Henry and followed him into the boy’s lavatory. I didn’t do much, other than to check on him and tell him I was sorry he got hurt. I quickly left him and returned to the game.

The reason I bring this up is because it has been a pattern with me throughout my life and therefore, I suspect, one of my truths has lain hidden within these scenarios. In looking back on the myriad times I’ve attempted to soothe the underdog I realize that much of what was at work with me was my empathic sense. I truly felt their emotional pain and in some sense I wanted it to go away. But, there is more. There is the truth that I am my brother’s keeper; that I must FIX. Every parent experiences it with their children and many folks fall into the category of the Good Samaritan. There is nothing wrong with being a Good Samaritan, but it is important to understand that being one is not a truth, but it is a truth for the one that holds it.

Let me back up a bit. I never tried to FIX the underdog, but on occasion I have tried to rescue them from the topdog. Both attempts – fixing and rescuing – is a form of non-acceptance of both the underdog and myself. In attempting to fix and/or rescue I project an energy that discounts their ability to choose and create their own reality, and because I configure the underdog’s energy through my perception (he is my creation) I also discount myself. In my rescuing I project to the underdog that they are not creating their reality efficiently and that their choice is unacceptable. This, again, is non-acceptance and says that I can create their reality better than they can.

Another way this rescuing behavior discounts myself is in my perception that I can’t create my reality the way I want. What I want is acceptance on the part of everyone. However, my self-worth and value are intrinsic to who I am. It is not earned. It comes into the world with me. I don’t need the underdog to make myself feel better about me, nor do I need the topdog to acknowledge me.

The Good Samaritan is a strong belief that resides within the religious belief system. Intrinsically it is neither good nor bad, even though our preferences attach “good” to the Good Samaritan. It is a belief that is deeply entrenched in the psyche of The Forgotten Self. Many other beliefs glom on to it; beliefs such as we can control some things, but not all things (victimization); that some people just can’t take care of themselves without help; think of others before yourself…. There are plenty of birds in the birdcage called religious beliefs.

This is not to say we should not care, but how do we integrate caring with our need to fix and rescue. Fixing and rescuing is not a need, for we need nothing although we believe we need a lot. Fixing and rescuing is a preference and a choice; and for some it is a truth. There is nothing wrong with this as long as we understand that our truths are true for us, but not true for everyone. Couple that with the further understanding that the underdogs are not wrongly creating their own reality. They are creating within their own Intent and Value Fulfillment.

If my understanding of the Seth/Elias information is correct then I may have preferences that align with the Intent I brought with me into this reality. This intent may include exploring the concept of helping. The difference between The Forgotten Self and the Remembered Self is that the Remembered Self understands that his desire to help is a preference and a choice and as such is not an absolute. That is to say that the ideal of the Good Samaritan is not a cosmic truth. We draw the underdogs to ourselves, just as the underdogs draw us to them, and we each do it for our own reasons. (Remember my post on agreements?). So, if I offer a hungry person some food, I do it because I want to and not because the hungry person is a poor soul who needs me to survive. If I offer a heroin addict a rehab program I do it for me because it is my preference to do so. I offer the program with no expectations regarding whether the addict will accept my offer or if he does I hold no expectations whether he will successfully complete the program. That would be his choice. Plain and simple; I just stop judging!

The underdog is no less nor is he any more than the topdog. Each is simply exploring physical reality in a different manner. There is also nothing wrong with the topdog who completely ignores the underdog. It is as important to accept the topdog as it is to accept the underdog. No one needs fixing. No one needs rescuing.
Bill Marshall