GETTING OUT OF MY OWN WAY

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

(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

(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

(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

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

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

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....

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

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.....

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.....

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

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

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

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

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

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

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.......
-------------------------------------------------------------------------------

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

What? Me Worry!!

Remember Alfred E. Neuman from Mad Magazine? His famous words seem to have ingrained themselves into our collective psyches. In session 1393 Elias had this to say about worry:
ELIAS: Yes. Your attention is not present. And you project in association with the largest word, which is one of the smallest words, the “if.” What if, what if, what if. Once you begin to move into what if, what if, what if, your attention is occupied very much in the future, attempting to solve dilemmas that have not occurred, in anticipation of dilemmas which are not present and have not occurred.
Now; what are you creating and DOING in that action? In that projection, you are actually reinforcing an expression of energy outwardly to CREATE the dilemmas that you anticipate.

I think Alfred E. Neuman had an insight that we might consider incorporating ourselves, for as Elias has pointed out, worry throws us right out of the NOW and lands us on our collective asses in the future. And where is the future created? In the NOW. How can we create in the now if our attention is focused in the future? We can’t!

I’ve noticed, and you have also, that our news programs actually begin some of their segments with, “Should We Be Worried?” This morning (9/22/06) on the CBS morning show they had a bit on the “dangers” of not washing your hands often enough and then proceeded to demonstrate how to do it in a public place. First you get the paper towels and tuck them under your arm. By doing this you don’t have to touch the 'filth infested' dispenser with your clean hands after washing them. Of course they didn’t mention cleaning your dirty armpit before stuffing the paper towels there. Then you wash your hands vigorously for twenty seconds under hot water and avoid anti-bacterial soap. Anti-bacterial soap, we are told, can create drug resistant strains of bacteria. OK, you’re done washing your hands, but you don’t want to turn off the filth infested faucet with them because that would also defeat the purpose of washing in the first place. You bend over and somehow use your elbow to turn it off, or, grab the paper towel under your arm and use that.

Come on! As the Kit Kat candy commercial says, “Gimme a Break!” All of this gloom and doom reporting seems to be dividing us all into two camps. The first is the camp
of the fearful; those who live their lives in defense mode all the time. The second camp is comprised of those who have been so bombarded by all this victimization reporting that they have chosen not to believe any of it. I remember seeing a report on the harmful effects of milk. Eureka!!!! Milk?

The first camp has been slowly withdrawing from life, while the second camp, tired of feeling the victim of everything in their environment, has finally begun to engage life. The first camp has become the collective “Bubble Boy” of Seinfeld fame, while the second camp dances freely around the first camp. The first camp, of course, thinks the members of the second camp are all foolhardy, but wonder why they’re not all getting sick. They look out in amazement as camp 2 ride their bikes without helmets, drink milk, and (oh my God) touch public faucets with their bare hands. Strangely enough, camp one members keep getting sick even while wearing latex gloves and face masks, while those healthy camp 2 members cough and sneeze and then hug each other.

Now, this is not to say that camp two members are going around picking up dog turds with their bare hands. No, this they will not do. It’s just too gross. Nor will they .romp through a hospital ward filled with patients suffering from ebola hemorrhagic fever. Camp two understands this is a belief driven reality, but that they are in the beginning throes of the Remembered Self and so they take small steps so as not to overwhelm themselves and fall back into camp one of the Forgotten Self. So, my suggestion is this: if you’ve noticed that the world you live in is becoming increasingly dangerous; if you’ve installed high-end alarm systems in your homes; if you festoon your children with helmets, shin guards, knee guards, elbow guards and mouth guards before you send them out the door, it is to your beliefs you must turn. Your beliefs form your reality. You can create in fear or you can create in freedom. The choice has always been ours.
Bill Marshall

HEALTH

I am a two needle a day news junkie. I get the light news in the a.m. and the heavy-duty stuff in the p.m. A few years ago the anchor for CBS Evening News introduced a short piece about how scientists had made a connection between male pattern baldness and heart disease. I thought to myself, “My God, they have just killed an untold number of bald men.” Why were they killed? For the same reason voodoo works its magic on those that believe in it. There are enough men who believe so strongly in the power of science that such a news piece acts strongly through the power of suggestion.

Deaths per 100,000 population due to lung cancer are on the decline (except for American women). Many believe that the decline is due to fewer Americans smoking and better treatment modalities for the illness. However, immediately after the US Surgeon General’s warning appeared on cigarette packs in 1966, the rate of deaths due to lung cancer shot up. Now, forty years later, many of us are so conditioned to the advertising about the risks of smoking that the habit is never initiated, and those that have taken up smoking are quitting in droves. Could it be that the number of lung cancer deaths per 100,000 of the general population (not the smoking population) is dropping because of the belief that by not smoking we have developed some immunity to lung cancer? Many are surprised when someone who never smoked dies of lung cancer Steve Reeve’s wife is a case in point. We are told that if we quit smoking our lungs will repair themselves within a few years. Could it be that the quitters believe that they have earned a degree of immunity once they get past the belief that there is a three-year lung-healing process? Science tells us virtually nothing about the impact of our belief system on our health because they believe the psyche is a product of matter, and yet they admit to the reality of the placebo effect. They know that human chemistry changes based on our emotional state, but continue to say that illnesses such as depression are ‘caused’ by a problem with our blood chemistry. They don’t say what is being proposed here; that the change in blood chemistry arises simultaneously with the depression. Maybe it’s time we begin to understand that the depression and the change in brain chemistry are objective manifestations of an inner subjective state. Our illness may be created as a means of communication.

Seth tells us that what we believe about smoking is more important in terms of its impact on our health than the smoking itself. In Sweden, 22% of the male population over the age of fifteen are smokers, and the death rate from lung cancer is 161.4 per 100,000 male smokers. In Israel, 45% of males smoke and yet their death rate per 100,000 male smokers is only 84.7, half the rate of that in Sweden. In Japan, a whopping 59% of males smoke compared to 28% of American males, and yet Japan’s death rate is a low 81 per 100,000 smoking males compared to the U.S rate of 306. The data is similar for females in the U.S. Twenty-three percent of females over the age of fifteen smokes, and the death rate is 157 per 100,000 female smokers. In Spain the percentage of female smokers is higher than that in the U.S., 25%, and yet Spain’s death rate is only 21.6 per 100,000 female smokers.

This gets even more puzzling, or does it? In every developed country the death rates for male smokers is two to three times higher than it is for females, except in Japan, where the death rate to lung cancer for female smokers is higher than for Japanese smoking men. Why are death rates the same for Israeli and Japanese men, but for women the rate is twice as high in Japan? To get an answer in The Forgotten Self’s world our scientists might do studies on variables such as food intake, water content and hundreds of other daily variables except the psychological differences (belief systems) between oriental and occidental women who smoke, which would be a Remembered Self’s investigation. In a world where the predominant idea is that matter creates psyche, is it any wonder we get so much conflicting data as to the cause of things? For now, however, I recommend that if you smoke, keep to the company line and try to quit, but think about how your beliefs drive you and more importantly just try to understand the communication the illness brings.

Our bodies are magnificently constructed in such a way that it will respond to whatever we believe about it. The body has its own consciousness, but is exquisitely sensitive to our own subjective states. The evidence, however, seems to indicate just the opposite. The evidence of one of the central ideas of our time, that of scientific method, tells us that we are vulnerable to a Pandora's Box worth of invaders. We must be forever vigilant- the theory goes - lest some nasty microbe establishes a beachhead, or one of our healthy cells decides to mutate and turn against us. When I believe that consciousness is a by-product of matter it is a small leap of faith to believe that I am vulnerable to just about everything. And since I create what I believe, the evidence that confirms my beliefs will appear in abundance. Through the agency of free will many believe in our vulnerability and so we are vulnerable.

I realize I’m treading on sacred ground here, but our belief in our body’s inability to stay healthy has gotten so extreme that some women are sacrificing their breasts before any evidence of cancer appears, based solely upon a strong family history of breast cancer. Beliefs that deeply seeded are what required my legal disclaimer. Our physicians, as well-intentioned as they are, scoff at the practices of voodoo witch doctors and yet routinely ask us to sacrifice our breasts, reproductive organs, prostate glands, legs, thyroid's, hearts, lungs. Our response to this is that we would die if they were not removed, and we are right. We would die, but is it always by choice and it is never before we are finished. It only appears so.

Changing our understanding of who we are is going to take time, maybe even generations. The result, however, might be a future of high-tech medicine and self healing. When one of us does come down with an illness for the sake of the experience or because we were not listening to ourselves, we might seek the help of a healer who is an expert in symbolism, while our traditional physician buys us some time. We will seek through our own inner wisdom a connection between the ailment and an inner psychic dynamic that we failed to listen to. We will no longer be victims and illness and healing will be understood as a self-creation.

Bill Marshall

OPTIMISM

We are gradually hypnotizing ourselves into a state of chronic pessimism and fear, but in so doing we are placing our beliefs before us in such stark fashion they are becoming impossible to ignore. Everywhere we turn we see victims. An avalanche of terrorism, natural disasters, viruses and allergens is burying optimism. Our children no longer climb maple trees nor skip down the neighbourhood sidewalk unwatched. Like a slow creeping hearing loss that goes unnoticed until its teeth are deeply sunk into the cochlea we are slowly but surely becoming a race of defenders. Life has become less an experience than an enemy to be guarded against. Our media bombards us with the evidence that life is dangerous. But, there is a purpose to it all and we are its creators. We create it to bring our beliefs into stark relief.

Our natural birthright is optimism, but it is secondary to free will. Perception is not a receiver of reality. Perception is the projector of it. Perception, moulded by our beliefs, projects outwardly in physical form abstract representations of our inner states of being. More and more we are coming to believe in victimhood, and so perception projects the belief outward in physical form so that we can see it. I want to make a case for optimism, for it is easier to create in joy and pleasure than it is to create in trauma, conflict and suffering.

Pessimists call optimists Pollyannas. Considering what we are taught about the nature of reality the wonder is not that there are pessimists, but that any of us remain optimists. How any of us stay optimistic about life has to be one of the great mysteries of the past four centuries. We have done a bang-up job through science and religion of making pessimists out of the lot of us. For the evidence we merely need check the sales records for drugs such as Zoloft, Prozac and Xanax. Depression is rampant, and when you are depressed you concentrate almost exclusively on misery. It’s a vicious cycle. Pessimism creates depression, which creates even more pessimistic thoughts, which continues to create the evidence that your belief in pessimism is well warranted. Religion aids and abets pessimism because it tells us that our reward is not in the moment, but in the hereafter, and so we are rarely present in the moment. Religion as currently understood robs us of our innate optimism and like a crowbar it pries us out of the present.

For most of us Baptism is our first religious rite. If only Adam hadn't taken that bite of the apple from the tree of the knowledge of good and evil. In telling this story to children the problem lies in that they are not sophisticated enough to realize it is metaphoric of our fall into a world of seeming duality, not of sin. The word ‘fall’ suggests a descent from a loftier place. It establishes hierarchy and an understanding that we are spoiled goods. We all come into this world with the sins of our fathers, the dogma goes. Our parents tell us they love us and cherish us, but the big message is that we came with a problem. The story of Adam and Eve’s expulsion from the Garden of Eden is the first blow to our innate sense of optimism. It is the first blow to our self-esteem. As the Woody Harrelson movie tells us, we are “Natural Born Killers,” and we must guard against its expression all our lives.

Trouble continues to dog us after Baptism. We are taught God loves us, but then we’re hit with a contradiction the size of Great Britain. Yes, God loves us, but if we sin we will burn in hell for all eternity. Whatever happened to unconditional love? For those of you that believe that unconditional love is a goal of life why create a concept of God that portrays just the opposite? This contradiction worked its way into our collective psyche like a screw worm works its way into driftwood. To maintain the feeling of ‘We-ness’ and that we are an individual manifestation of an aspect of God is not easy under such a barrage. Pessimism grows. This is but one small facet in the creation of our belief systems. We learned that we are so bad and God’s love for us so great that only a sacrifice so large as the crucifixion of his ‘only son’ could redeem us. Not a good picture for building self-esteem, but great for perpetuating guilt. The historical Jesus sees through much of the veil we have pulled over our eyes and says, ‘I and the Father are one.’ What do we do with Jesus' startling and potentially transforming information? We assign divinity to him alone. God stayed up there, and we remained stuck down here.

The Jesus Seminar came about in 1985 when scholars, led by the late Robert W. Funk, decided to do something about the inconsistencies among some of the words attributed to Jesus in the four gospels of the New Testament. Over the past twenty years more than one hundred scholars from around the world have participated in this semi-annual meeting. There is a thought process, a timber, a resonance that attaches itself to the nature of a human being. If I consistently write of love, peace and understanding and live those words outwardly in my life, people get a sense of who I am and what I am about. The Jesus Seminar came together to find what Jesus may have actually said in the midst of all that which Matthew, John, Mark and Luke wrote that he said. How is the Jesus Seminar important to our understanding of optimism and pessimism? If a case is to be made for optimism then it must have the ring of truth. In Matthew, chapter 6 verses 25-34 Jesus tells us about the universe being well disposed towards us. I will let Jesus' words speak for themselves.

Therefore I say unto you, Take no thought for your life, what you shall eat, or what you shall drink; nor yet for your body, what you shall put on. Is not life more than meat, and the body more than raiment?
Behold the fowls in the air: for they sow not, nor do they reap, nor gather into barns; yet your heavenly Father feeds them. Are you not much better than they?
Which of you by taking thought can add one cubit unto his stature?
And why take you thought for raiment? Consider the lilies of the field, how they grow; they toil not, neither do they spin:
And yet I say unto you, that even Solomon in all his glory was not arrayed like one of these.
Wherefore, if God so clothe the grass of the field, which today is, and tomorrow is cast into the oven, shall he not much more clothe you, O you of little faith?
Therefore take no thought, saying, what shall we eat? Or, what shall we drink? Or, in wherewithal shall we be clothed?
(For after all these things to do the Gentiles seek:) for your heavenly Father knows that you have need of all these things.
But seek you first the kingdom of God, and his righteousness; and all these things shall be added unto you.
Take therefore no thought for the morrow: for the morrow shall take thought for the things of itself. Sufficient unto the day is the evil thereof.

Jesus’ words challenge us to live a life based on optimism and trust. Seth and Elias tell us that we get what we concentrate upon and concentration is based on our beliefs and not on thought. If we concentrate on fear, we will give ourselves the evidence that our belief in fear is appropriate. If we believe the world is populated by thieves we better lock our doors and nail down our valuables because we’re going to meet a thief or two. Being responsible for ourselves is an idea that in itself creates fear in many of us. We like order and rules that map out our course.

Jesus tells us that the way to salvation is through a narrow gate and that few will take it. Many will remain on the wide road. John Sanford in The Kingdom Within says the wide way is the way of mass identity. Individuality is fearful to many that have developed the habit of always comparing themselves to others. Conscious awareness requires an acceptance (non-judgment) of differences.

Jesus’ words have layer upon layer of meaning. Sanford, an Episcopalian priest and Jungian therapist, sees Jesus as challenging us to become conscious. But, like an onion, Jesus’ words have yet more layers of meaning. The narrow gate or constricted passage can also mean the way of self responsibility. The wide way, that of blaming chance, others, or unseen forces for our plight has been our choice for thousands of years. If we become ill, how much easier is it to say, “I am a victim,” than to address the issue we have invited illness into our lives to communicate. If we are alcohol or drug dependent how much easier is it to say that we are genetically predisposed to addiction than it is to question why we have chosen addiction as a life path? What does our addiction have to say to us? It is not telling us we are bad. It is comparing ourselves to others that tell us either we or they are bad or we or they are good. Both are judgments.

The Buddha has said that if you find him along your path you should kill him. His meaning, of course, is that you are responsible for your own footfalls in life; he but shows the way to finding our own path. We have been exceptionally good at following the wide way. The religious dogma is that salvation can be won through a belief in Jesus. But how does that equate to a narrow gate? We have always found it easy to be followers. It is time we believe in ourselves.
Bill Marshall

Steve Hancock: In Memorium

Carl Jung, the father of Archetypal psychology said: “We are so convinced that death is simply the end of a process that it does not ordinarily occur to us to conceive of death as a goal and a fulfillment, as we do without hesitation the aims and purposes of youthful life in its ascendance.”

It is my greatest honor to give the eulogy for my best friend, Steve Hancock. But he was also tom's best friend and Dean's and others. But more importantly, when you were with Steve he made you feel as though you were HIS best friend. A few days before Steve left us, Brenda and Maureen Collins and I were sitting by his bed, while Steve danced between this world and the next and when he returned to this world his eyes would open and his beautiful smile spread across his face. That smile was the clue to what Steve was all about. On August 15, 2006 our beloved friend, Steve Hancock, left this life for a new adventure, leaving his family and friends with more gifts than we could possibly carry. My intent here is not to describe the gifts Steve left us with, we all individually know that, but rather the gifts his pancreatic cancer brought to him. I joined him on his three year journey with his disease possibly in a different way than others who were equally close to him.

Steve Hancock was many things, but to his closest friends he was pure sweetness, pure joy. Steve would allow Tom, Dean and myself into his central core, for he never needed a defense while with us. Stevie surrounded that core of pure unprocessed sweetness with a bravery, a strength, a loyalty, a sense of responsibility, a patriotism and a tenacity that most of us could only aspire to. Many saw his toughness and thought that it was his toughness that kept him in the battle for three years. And it did, but his toughness had a goal. That goal was to dig and dig until it revealed to Steve that core sweetness that drove everything else. As his cancer progressed and his body withered, Steve’s understanding of himself blossomed. He used to refer to himself as Mr. Defense, and traces of it remained, as when he’d squirt cologne into the full-on blower of his car’s air conditioner, forcing those riding with him to crank down the windows. But as his attention turned more and more toward himself he came finally to understand that there was nothing to defend against.

Steve’s cancer brought him physical limitations, which were difficult to witness for all of us that loved him, but again, as his physical powers diminished his self insight grew. Steve was not a big man, if one measures a man by his size, but Damn, was he strong. There was no one I’d rather have “taking my back” in a tough situation. It was difficult for him to acknowledge the loss of his strength and yet he was willing to accept it as long as what he called “The Inner Gifts” kept coming.

“Billy,” he said. “I know people wouldn’t understand this, but my cancer is the best thing that could have happened to me.” He paused for a moment and with that beautiful smile of his added, “Except for Brenda, of course.” God! How he loved Brenda. A few days before his death we argued about whether there was a song named Brenda. I later realized that Steve believed there was because to him Brenda was a song. We talked of death and for Steve it was not to be feared. What Steve feared most was how his family would fare without him. Responsibility was a strong belief in Steve; held as a truth above all others, even above loyalty and courage. They were his path markers throughout his life and they guided him well. What his cancer taught him, amongst many other things, is that his path markers were not necessarily everyone elses path markers.

He began to allow others their choices and as he did he drew to himself his own acknowledgment through the visible affection heaped upon him by friends and strangers alike. People came out of the woodwork to thank him for how he had touched their lives. The more he talked about these things the more Steve approached the realization that there was nothing about himself that was unacceptable. He grew more at peace even while his cancer ravaged his powerful body. The sugar, the furnace that fired him and drove all else, was making itself known to Steve Hancock.

People were drawn to Steve because he carried for them those aspects of themselves they feared to openly express. Steve could make you laugh when you thought you were ready to cry, and he loved to sing. Boy, did he love to sing. Nothing would keep him from breaking out in song. His favorite (next to The Star Spangled Banner) was “Only You” the 50’s classic, and he crooned it as beautifully to the 90 year old woman at the Manchester Turkey Day Race as he did to a group of 20 somethings at the Mohegan Sun. They giggled and wondered if Steve wanted to be paid. Tommy laughed and said, “Hell, ladies. He does it because he loves to see you smile.”

Steve wondered sometimes – as we all do – what people thought of him. “Billy," he once asked, “Do you think people only see me as a song and laugh man?” He needed to know that he mattered, that he made a difference. God, did he matter. But, I told him that what mattered most is what he thinks of himself. Steve Hancock left an indelible mark on all those who drew him into their lives; some for just the briefest of moments, and others like me and Dean and Tom, who needed so much more from him. Randy Collins, who Steve loved like a son, wears Steve's Saint Jude medal around his next as he fights for freedom as a marine in Iraq. Few understood the significance of that gesture. It brought Steve home safely from Vietnam nearly forty years ago.
Toward the end we shared what each of us carried for the other as though we were each one side of the same coin. This was something we didn’t or couldn’t do before cancer entered his life and mine and yours too.

Steve gravitated to battles, whether they be in Vietnam or a 26.2 mile race. You are the man, Steve, and WE thank you for the light you shined upon all of us.How beautifully typical that this Marine’s Marine would choose such a battle to get to his own golden sugar.

And so the sugar ROSE and ROSE until all one could see of Steve was pure sweetness. It outweighed his strength, which he carried to the end. It outweighed his sense of responsibility, which finally relinquished him so he could go. It outweighed his courage, which kept those who knew him in awe. But more than anything else, his sweetness- that was always known to everyone else – at last revealed itself to Steve. At death, Steven Hancock finally knew about himself what all of those he temporarily left behind had always known. Above all those things that our culture holds dear; things like courage, responsibility, loyalty Steve at his core was sweetness.

Now, at this point I thought I had finished Steve’s eulogy, written the day after he departed. I needed to run, as it is that space in which I find my own peace. I headed out my back door and into the woods and then into the Norwich industrial park. My head and heart was filled with Steve. As I passed Dodd Stadium I invited Steve along for the run, not by my side but as part of my own spirit, and as I asked, a wave of pure joy filled me and I gasped. It was not a gasp of sorrow, but rather a gasp of knowing joy. Steve was with me.

I ran further and felt a rush of pure thought that formed itself slowly into words. I know as surely as I know that I am standing here that it was Steve telling me something. His words came and filled my mind. They were meant for Steven, Michelle and Derrick. I realized then that I had left them out of Steve’s Eulogy and he was telling me what he wanted to say to them. These are his words that I felt on that run:

Dearest Steven, Michelle and Derrick,
I have left you a treasure chest full of me. There was a time when I felt it my responsibility to pick out of that chest for you. What I say to you now is this: Choose freely from my chest and use what suits your own natures, not mine. Some of what I have left you may serve you, some may not. I set you free to be who you are, and who you are I love oh so well.

That, my friends, is who Steve Hancock is. PURE SWEETNESS!



Now, try to bring Steve into focus, because if he could give his own eulogy this would be it.

by the Platters
Only you can make this world seem right
Only you can make the darkness bright
Only you and you alone
Can thrill me like you do
And fill my heart with love for only you

Only you can make this change in me
For it's true, you are my destiny
When you hold my hand
I understand the magic that you do
You're my dream come true
My one and only you

Only you can make this change in me
For it's true, you are my destiny
When you hold my hand
I understand the magic that you do
You're my dream come true
My one and only you

DOGMA and SCIENCE

In Dreams, Evolution and Value Fulfillment, Volume 1 Seth says:

“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.”

Through my books and this blog I hope to arouse that part of us that is never fooled. So why pick on science? After all, science has brought us all those conveniences that have served to connect us, even though the underlying concept they use to produce those conveniences says that everything is a result of material forces. The bone I wish to pick with science is not with the idea of science, but with science’s dogmatic view that consciousness is a product of matter, specifically the brain. As long as science sticks to its dogma they will not progress significantly beyond their current road. Specifically, science has for years tried to develop a “Theory of Everything.” They are moving forward with string theory, but continue to be stymied by the instant of creation, that moment just before the big bang. When they try to look beyond that moment, all their formulations break down. Why?

DOGMA! Dogma is to science and religion as blinders are to a race horse. Blinders keep the horse’s attention focused straight ahead so that it cannot be distracted from what impinges on it from the side. Skeptics are those who are blinded by dogma and deny even their own experience that falls outside the boundaries of the dogma. The boldest venture outside those boundaries at their own peril. CG Jung wrote in Mysterium Coniunctionis : “The wise man who is not heeded is counted a fool, and the fool who proclaims the general folly first and loudest passes for a prophet and Fuhrer, and sometimes it is luckily the other way round as well, or else mankind would long since have perished of stupidity.” Jung was a wise man and dared to venture beyond the dogma of the time that said there is only a personal unconscious created only during a lifetime. It was Jung that coined the term, “The Collective Unconscious.” In 1919 Jung said: “I shall not commit the fashionable stupidity of regarding everything I can't explain as a fraud.”

In quantum physics it is said that the experimenter cannot be extracted from his experiment, which is to say in 21st Century Reality language, the experiment and the experimenter are one and the same. Dr. Marilyn Schlitz conducted studies to determine the effect of interested human observers on random number generators. She found a statistically significant effect. She then invited renowned skeptics to conduct the exact same experiment. They found no significant effect. Dr. Schlitz expected a significant result, which is to say that she believed that consciousness is not local to the brain and that action can occur without a material cause. The skeptics believe consciousness is created by the brain and that nothing happens without material cause. Now I can’t say whether Dr. Schlitz believes that we each create are own reality, but I can say that the Skeptics scoff at the idea.

If what this blog puts forward is accurate – that there is no THE REALITY and that we each create our individual realities – then Dr. Schlitz and the skeptics are both right. The results confirm their individual beliefs. Until they both understand this there will be conflicting results when testing the effects of consciousness. You get what you believe, not what you think you believe. We have fables that foretell change, and often it is the child that proclaims the folly of the old. The Emperor's New Clothes is such an admonition. In this fable no one dares tell the King he is naked, so everyone acknowledges how beautiful his new clothes are. To proclaim the Emperor's folly would be akin to breaking the dogma and removing the blinders from the race horse. Proclaim it, however, and we sail beyond a fixed horizon.

It took a child in the fable to open everyone's eyes, but in our age we don't listen to our children. We think we do, but we don’t. When we think we are listening we tell them the Emperor is not naked, but is wearing a splendid new suit of clothing. We are, like our own parents and parents of all time, entranced. We become unconscious hypnotists ourselves. Like us, our children grow up believing in Newton and Descartes, but not knowing it; believing in cause and effect to the exclusion of all else; believing that our true nature is base and must be held in check; believing that the world we live in is hostile and we are defenceless against predators, large and small. We are taught to believe that reality is defined by what we can hear, see, touch, taste, and smell, and that psyche is a product of matter. There is much that goes on in our world that does not fit our small snapshot of reality. Bob Dylan knew something when in 1964 he sang, “The times, they are a changin’”

Bill Marshall

Check out my books, The Forgotten Self (US) and (UK) and Gideon McGee’s Dream. For those Elias folks who haven’t purchased the book, a hint to what the story is about can be gained by counting the number of rose petals on the cover.

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.

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

DEATH

(Sorry, but no pictures this time. Blogger is having a problem with it's upload software.)

Illness is a part of life's overall plan. Just as ‘up’ is a necessity to ‘down’ and ‘in’ is a necessity to ‘out’, so too is illness a necessity to health. It is complementary and a part of the duality of this reality. Cure one disease and up pops another. Cure TB and an epidemic of asthma appears. Close the door to smallpox and in walks AIDS. Wipe out polio, and on the saliva of a deer tick dances in Lyme disease. Because disease is part of our belief system we should not stop our fight against it. But, we should also try to understand its purpose. Science tells us the purpose of a virus is to replicate itself, nothing more, and the purpose of our immune system is to keep it from doing so, nothing more. Science tells us that hostility is inbred in nature, that it is the survival of the fittest. Seth and Elias claim we do not ‘catch’ a virus. They state that all viruses can be found in the body and that the subjective and objective self triggers their replication.

Seth teaches that all matter is conscious and despite theories to the contrary, all things, animate and inanimate, depend upon inborn cooperation. It is cooperation, not survival of the fittest that governs all of nature. “Each organism has a purpose, and it is to fulfil its own capabilities in such a way that it benefits all other organisms.” This mirrors perennial philosophical thinking. There are many ways we benefit and not all of it do we judge as good. When a virus multiplies unchecked in our bodies it is because it has been invited to do so by one or more of our beliefs as a means of communication and/or experience, and not because it has an insatiable need to reproduce at all costs. It is important to remember that death is merely a change of focus in consciousness if we are to get to a point where we can believe that matter is conscious and cooperative. If we believe that this shining point of focus we call life is all that there is then we will go kicking and screaming into the darkness. But, if we trust that life is eternal and that it is we who choose our departure time, then we can look upon disease states and death with different eyes. Nothing is as sure as death and taxes. We prepare for taxes, but run from death our entire lives.

Consciousness does not experience death as a failure, whether it comes early or late, by expectation or not. Consciousness is eternal and, as such, unexpected or early death is seen as another experience that only went so far. Those that are left behind do not see it that way because of our belief system, but for those that die, the realization eventually occurs. Death is not an end, but simply a new beginning, and it always has its purpose.

Consider this story as an example of a widening awareness that death can bring. Jacob Thrimble is close to death. He is sixty years old and his family is gathered around his deathbed to pay their final respects to a husband and father who, according to their beliefs, is leaving them too soon. It is obvious to his wife and only son that Jacob wants to tell them something, and so they draw close to his lips.
“I never did enough,” Jacob whispers through dry and cracked lips.
“Nonsense,” his wife cries. She reminds him of all the sacrifices he made for her; how he bought her the beautiful fur coat she had always wanted with the money he was saving for a badly needed new farm tractor.
“No,” Jacob whispered. “I never did enough.”
This time his son answered. “You did more than anyone could ask of a father,” he said. “You gave up golf and fishing and all the things you love and took on an extra job to put me through college. No one could ask more of a father. You did more than enough.”
Jacob Thrimble opened his eyes and took them both in for the last time. On his final breath came these words. “No,” he said. “I never did enough for myself.”

The insight only came at the moment of death. It was death’s gift to Jacob Thrimble, or more accurately, Jacob’s gift to himself. There are many who lose the fight to death at an earlier than expected age, but if we allow it, we can find the victory in an apparent defeat. Those of us that are left behind feel cheated by death. It has robbed us of a loved one and we believe it has cut short our beloved's life. This is what we believe, and it is that belief that saddens us so deeply at our apparent loss. It’s not what happens within consciousness, but it is what we believe happens and so we experience it. Where is this afterlife religion says exists, but our scientists cannot find? Science says, “show me or I won’t believe it,” while religion says, “you must have faith.” We are caught between a rock and a hard place.

I was eighteen when the women’s movement began. I was brought up to respect women, to open doors for them, to take care of them, and to light their cigarettes. “Ladies before gentlemen” was the catch phrase, even unto death, before the women's movement began in the early sixties. The early battle between feminism and chauvinism left me confused, just as the battle between religion and science has us confused. I felt as though I was damned if I did and damned if I did not. If I opened the car door for my date, was I a male chauvinist pig trying to keep women subjugated and inferior, or was I a gentleman following the rules of courtesy as I was taught? It is a little like that with science and religion. We see the benefits science has brought us, but the idea itself has cut us off from our essential selves. That science cannot prove the existence of simultaneous realities, or that consciousness can exist apart from the body, does not mean we cannot believe in it until we experience it. The more of us that believe the more the proof will appear. Prophets and sages have experienced detached consciousness, and written about it throughout the ages and we did believe it, once. Many knew time was relative long before Einstein proved it. We gotta get out of this place some time and death will lose its sting when we understand that death is not an end, but a new beginning.

If we are to prepare for death as we prepare for taxes we must begin to understand what death is about. What is most important is this very moment of this very real life that we are presently living. It is in this moment that eternity exists. The present moment is our point of power. It is through an understanding of who we really are in the grandest sense that an understanding of death will become clear. We have believed for too long that if we don't get ‘it’ here, we’ll get ‘it’ there, that if we don't feel ‘it’ here, we’ll feel ‘it’ there. We don't know what ‘there’ is, but we do have some understanding of the ‘here.’ Our concept of the place called heaven has kept us from being fully present in the place called ‘here’. This ‘here’ and this ‘now’ that we find ourselves in, is all we’ve got, and if we don’t make the most of it because we think we’ll get it ‘there’ we are cheating ourselves. To await my heaven, while ignoring what is at hand is like the Sad Sack who does nothing to change his life, and proclaims to all who will listen, how life would be so much better if only he could pick the right six numbers on his State’s lottery.

Our belief in the afterlife is as simplistic as our understanding of God. Death is not an end; it merely marks a new beginning in terms of how we view the forward march of time. GC Jung in The Structure and Dynamics of the Psyche says:

“We are so convinced that death is simply the end of a process that it does not ordinarily occur to us to conceive of death as a goal and a fulfilment, as we do without hesitation the aims and purposes of youthful life in its ascendance.”

Death is an end and a beginning for consciousness, just as birth is an end and a beginning.
Bill Marshall

Check out The Forgotten Self, US or UK. It's a fictional account of a global shift in consciousness.

The TV Analogy

To believe that consciousness is created by matter, which is the predominant belief today, is akin to saying that a TV set is the primal cause of the images it displays. This is what we believe about the brain. If an alien made an appearance on our planet and saw a TV program he might believe that the set was producing the image. If he cut a wire he might lose a few channels, thereby confirming his belief. If he breaks the screen he would be further supported by his supposition. We know that the TV is merely a conduit for the images produced elsewhere, but when it comes to the brain we switch gears and go to thinking similar to that of the alien. In Jane Roberts/Seth’s 1981 book, The Individual and the Nature of Mass Events, Seth used a beautiful Television analogy regarding the nature of consciousness and the events we experience in this physical reality. I wish to share it with you here. As Ed McMahon might say, “Heeeeere’s Sethy.”

“I have used television as an analogy at various times, and I would like to do so again, to show the ways in which physical events are formed, and to try to describe the many methods used by individuals in choosing those particular events that will be personally encountered.

“Not only does television serve as a mass means of communal meditation, but it also presents you with highly detailed, manufactured dreams, in which each viewer shares to some extent. We will use some distinctions here, and so I am going to introduce the terms “Framework 1” and “Framework 2,” to make my discussion clear. (Elias= Regional Area 1 and Regional Area 2)

“We will call the world as you physically experience it, Framework 1. In Framework 1, you watch television programs, for example. You have your choice of many channels. You have favorite programs. You follow certain scenes or actors. You watch all of these dramas, hardly understanding how it is that they appear on your screen to begin with. You are certain, however, that if you do buy a television set it will perform in an adequate fashion, whether or not you are familiar with electronics.

“You switch from channel to channel with predictable results. The programming for channel 9, for example, does not suddenly intrude on Channel 6. Even the actors themselves, taking part in such sagas, have but the remotest idea of events that are involved in order that their own images will appear on your television screen. Their jobs are to act, taking it for granted that the technicians are following through.

“Now somewhere there is a program director, who must take care of the entire programming. Shows must be done on time; actors assigned their roles. Our hypothetical director will know which actors are free, which actors prefer character roles, which ones are heroes or heroines, and which smiling Don Juan always gets the girl – and in general who plays the good guys and the bad guys,.

“There is no need in my outlining in detail the multitudinous events that must occur so that you can watch your favorite program. You flip the switch and there it is, while all of that background work is unknown to you. You take it for granted. Your job is simply to choose the programs of your choice on any evening. Many others are watching the same programs, of course, yet each person will react quite individually.

“Now for a moment let us imagine that physical events occur in the same fashion – that you choose which (ones) flash upon the screen of your experience. You are quite familiar with the events of your own life, for you are, of course, your own main hero or heroine, villain or victim, or whatever. As you do not know what happens in the television studio before you observe a program, however, so you do not know what happens in the creative framework of reality before you experience physical events. We will call that vast “unconscious” mental and universal studio Framework 2.

“…..You can turn off a program that offends you. You can choose to buy or not buy a product whose virtues are being praised. Television presents you with a mirror to your society. It reflects and re-reflects through millions of homes the giant dreams and fears, the hopes and terrors of events in the most private individual.

“Television interacts with your lives, but it does not cause your lives. It does not cause the events that it depicts. With your great belief in technology, it often seems to many people that television creates violence, for example, or that it causes a love of over-materialism, or that it causes “loose morals.” Television reflects. In a manner of speaking it does not even distort, though it may reflect distortions. The writers and actors of television dramas are attuned to the “mass mind.” They are not leaders or followers. They are creative reflectors, acutely aware of the overall, generalized emotional and psychic patterns of the age.

“They also make choices as to which plays they will take part in. Each has his or her own favorite kind of role, even if the role be that of a maverick. To the actors, of course, their roles become strong parts of their personal experiences, while those who observe the plays take part largely as observers.

“You are aware through your newspapers and magazines of the dramas, news broadcasts, or other programs that are presently being offered. In the same way you are aware, generally speaking, of the “programs” being physically presented in your own nation and throughout the world. You decide which of these adventures you want to take part in – and those you will experience in normal life, or in Framework 1.

“The inner mechanisms that happen prior to your experience will take place in the vast mental studio of Framework 2. Here, all the details will be arranged, the seemingly chance encounters, for example, the unexplained coincidences that might have to occur before a physical event takes place.

“On a conscious level, and with your conscious reserves alone, you could not keep your body alive an hour. You would not know how to do it, for your life flows through you automatically and spontaneously. You take the details for granted – the breathing, the inner mechanisms of nourishment and elimination, the circulation, and the maintenance of your psychological continuity. All of that is taken care of for you in what I have termed Framework 2.

“In that regard, certainly, everything works to your advantage. Indeed, often the more concerned you become with your body the less smoothly it functions. In the spontaneity of your body’s operation there is obviously a fine sense of order. When you turn on a television set the picture seems to come out of nowhere onto the screen – yet that picture is the result of order precisely focused.

“Actors visit casting agencies so that they know what plays need their services. In your dreams you visit “casting agencies.” You are aware of the various plays being considered for physical production. In the dream state, then, often you familiarize yourself with dramas that are of a probable nature. If enough interest is shown, if enough actors apply, if enough resources are accumulated, the play will go on. When you are in other than your normally conscious state, you visit that creative inner agency in which all physical productions must have their beginning. You meet with others, who for their own reasons are interested in the same kind of drama. Following our analogy, the technicians, the actors, the writers all assemble – only in this case the result will be a live event rather than a televised one. There are disaster films being planned, educational programs, religious drams. All of these will be encountered in full-blown physical reality.

“Such events occur as a result of individual beliefs, desires, and intents. There is no such thing as a chance encounter. No death occurs by chance, nor any birth. In the creative atmosphere of Framework 2, intents are known. In a manner of speaking, no act is private. Your communication systems bring to your living room notices of events that occur throughout the world. Yet that larger inner system of communications is far more powerful in scope, and each mental act is imprinted in the multidimensional screen of Framework 2. That screen is available to all, and in other levels of consciousness, particularly in the sleep and dreaming stages, the events of that inner reality are as ever-present and easily accessible as physical events are when you are awake.

“It is as if Framework 2 contains an infinite information service, that instantly puts you in contact with whatever knowledge you require, that sets up circuits between you and others, that computes probabilities with blinding speed. Not with the impersonality of a computer, however, but with a loving intent that has your best purposes in mind – yours and also those of each other individual.

“You cannot gain what you want at someone else’s detriment, then. You cannot use Framework 2 to force an event upon another person. Certain prerequisites must be met, you see, before a desired end can become physically experienced.”

Bill Marshall

Check out my lastest book, The Forgotten Self, US and UK

Truth or Consequences

When we don’t know our own truths is when we suffer the consequences. Our truths are actually beliefs that are held as absolutes. They are so rock solid that we never question them as beliefs, but hold them tightly as facts and, therefore, truths. Cause and effect is a belief that we hold as a truth, and because we do so we assume there is no other way it can be perceived. This limits choice, and Essence abhors a lack of choice. I refer you to my blog, It’s a Fack, Jack, where I address our belief in facts. A fact is merely a belief we have turned into a truth, and therefore an absolute. When, on occasion, that truth is broken we give it a new name. Any guesses?…… We call a broken fact a miracle, as in the case of stigmata which I wrote about in a previous blog.

There is no expressed truth in beliefs, and yet we seek to find truth, but at the same time they are not true. This is the paradox. Here’s a simple example: I hate the taste of brussel spouts. This is a tiny truth for me, but I realize that many people love the taste of brussel sprouts. So, my distaste for brussel sprouts is true, but it is not truth. We can get our minds around this simple example. A more difficult truth to wrap our minds around is the truth of pain. For most of us pain is a truth, but the paradox, again, is that it is not true.

Luigi is working in the garage while keeping his eye on his four-year-old son who is riding his tricycle in the driveway. Luigi is building a workbench and whacks his thumb with the hammer. The pain is intense and his attention shifts immediately to the pain. Suddenly he hears screeching tires in the street and his attention shifts to the scene where his son is inches from the front bumper of an SUV. His attention has shifted from his thumb to his frightened and crying son. He runs down the driveway and scoops up his unhurt son, completely oblivious to the pain that only a moment earlier was the center of his world. The pain is gone. Once his son is .securely back in the house and comforted Luigi’s attention shifts back to his thumb and his belief in pain. His thumb begins to throb again.

This is an example of a belief held in the absolute (hit your thumb with a hammer and it’s going to hurt). Pain is a belief that is greatly influenced by the far larger belief in cause and effect. It is Luigi’s truth (probably yours also), but it is not true. The evidence is the complete cessation of the pain between the screeching tires and the comforting of his son. During this time his attention and, therefore, his focus on a belief (pain) had shifted.

The belief system of truth is the most difficult to identify and notice because we never question what we believe to be true. We respond automatically and without question. Luigi never questioned that he had another choice when he hit his thumb with the hammer. His response was automatic and unquestioned, and yet for a period of time he was totally without pain and didn’t notice that his belief in pain during that time was not true. We all have numerous beliefs that go unnoticed, and when we don’t notice we can’t question that there may be another way to respond; another choice.

There is nothing wrong with our truths. They align with our Intent and Value Fulfillment, but in holding them without awareness we become non-accepting of differences. This non-acceptance is what causes conflict. We will draw to ourselves that which we do not accept so that we may view the mirror action or the reflection. The typical response in any conflict, either individual or global, is that I/we are right and you/they are wrong.

There are truths, but they are not what we typically think of as truths. “Real” truths are those that are translatable within every area of consciousness and through all dimensions and all realities. Ours is but one of numberless realities. Truths are not associated with concepts. Truths are associated with action, for consciousness is action. Consciousness is a truth. Reality is a truth. Choice is a truth. Color is a truth. Tone is a truth and love is a truth. Remember, the new definition of love is knowing (that we are all Essence) and appreciation (of what each of us creates). Spanking-your-child-is-bad is not a truth. It is a belief. Truths are not things. Things are abstract translations of inner subjective states. The truths that I am addressing in this blog are our truths that are associated with our beliefs.

We typically draw others to us whose truths are similar to our own. If you are a neo-nazi you are not going to be hanging out with Jews. Conversely, Jews are not going to have neo-nazis as members of their synagogue. Most of us would agree that our preference is for a harmonious life, free of hatred and racism, but there are those, such as the neo-nazis, who consider us weak and non-protective of family and country. Each of these two groups embodies different truths that are not true, but are reality. Remember, reality is a truth, but the things of reality are not.

In session 1799 of the Elias Transcripts, Elias says: “It is not a matter of altering other individuals. It is a matter of you engaging your creativity to discover a manner in which you can generate cooperation with other individuals in which you are not compromising you, but you are also not discounting or opposing the other individual. Let me express to you, if you are not expressing an opposing energy to another individual, whether you dislike them or disagree with them, the other individual shall not project an opposing energy to you either, which neutralizes the conflict.”

We will continue in our preferences of good/bad, right/wrong for they align with our individual Intents. What needs to change and what is in the process of changing is not applying our own individual truths to everyone else. This is where the acceptance of differences comes into play. You don’t have to agree with someone who holds opposing truths, nor is it necessary for you to try to sway them to your truth, for this is the action of non-acceptance. It is not necessary to agree in order to cooperate, for all individual truths are true, but only for the individual.
Bill Marshall

P.S. Please take a look at my book, The Forgotten Self, either in the US or the UK.

Mirrors and Reflections: Part Two

There are no accidents. There are no chance meetings. There is no kismet. Everyone you draw into your life you draw to be either a mirror or a reflection. That we so rarely pay attention to these reflections and mirrors explains why we are so unfamiliar with ourselves. Our attention is most often on the other individual and so we don’t get the information we attempt to provide ourselves through the interaction. Generally we pay more attention to those we are intimate with than we do to the person we accidentally bump into on the street. Our friends and lovers don’t reflect more, but we do pay more attention to them, which offers the opportunity to view the reflection more clearly.

Many times we don’t pay attention to the mirror action of another individual because we are not ready to see ourselves. In keeping our attention on the other individual we block the creation of a relationship with ourselves. We typically believe it takes a minimum of two to create a relationship and so we rarely think about having a relationship with ourselves. How do we interact with ourselves? After all, relationship is all about interaction. But… all that we see, hear, smell, taste, and touch is created by each individual. We do not interact with any other individual as an expression of Essence (Soul). The other individual as Essence merely offers its energy for you to do with as you please. It is our beliefs that tell us we interact with things outside ourselves and that friends, pets, possessions, etc., are not elements of us. THEY ARE.
What we directly interact with is our translation of an energy projection. The translation is done through our individual perceptions and from the “Blueprints” we receive from the energy projected to us. WE INTERACT WITH OUR PERCEPTION! So, when we engage a relationship with another individual we will create what we expect based on the influences of our beliefs. All of us create interpretations and translations of this swirling, moving energy.

We all experience the ups and downs of a relationship. For many it starts out well, and a few years later we’re beating ourselves up for being so blind to the “real” person we thought we loved. The problem, however, is not the other person or the relationship. It’s not them, them, them!! It’s us, us, us!! In those moments that we experience conflict with our loved ones (or anyone for that matter) we must turn our attention to ourselves and ask: What am I experiencing in this moment? What are my communications to me in this moment? What are my emotions trying to communicate to me? Emotions are NEVER reactions. Emotions are ALWAYS communications. They identify precisely what we are communicating to ourselves in the moment. Emotion only appears to be a reaction because our attention is generally outside ourselves and we therefore tune into the objective experience or action first. Remember, the objective experience or action is a translation that arises simultaneously with an inner subjective state.

The Forgotten Self – as per design – had paid attention outwardly and then only afterwards does The Forgotten Self turn its attention back to Self. This is what makes it seem as though emotion is a reaction. But, there has been a change in the blueprint whereby we are altering all of our reality. The rules by which we play our little game are changing, and the primary change lies in our remembering how we create. The veil of forgetfulness is being lifted. The objective world is abstract and changes constantly. What is important is our perception, which projects an ever-changing objective world. We may create hundreds of objective images to portray a single subjective state, and this is where our creativity lies. It is what keeps us from becoming bored with our game.

Let’s say you and your partner are in a heated conflict over the boundaries placed on your teenage son. (the illusion is that you direct your children) Not including your son, there are two realities at work here; the one you create and the one your partner creates. You are both in The Forgotten Self mode, which means: 1) You are not in cooperation. 2) You are not accepting either you, your partner or your son. 3) You are not paying attention to you. 4) You are in defense mode protecting your belief. 5) You are in automatic response mode (you hold your belief as absolute). Each of you feels threatened in the difference of opinion your partner displays.

The deeper reality is that you and your partner (all of us actually) are not different. You may each display different choices and behaviors, but you are both consciousness and consciousness is a unity. Elias has this to say about it: “within this time framework, in this shift in consciousness, you are offering yourselves the opportunity to widen your awareness and become accepting of all other individuals’ expressions, recognizing that they are also yours, for they shall not be within your reality if you are not choosing these expressions also.”

The more we create a discounting and a lack of acceptance of ourselves, the more we project that outward. The more we project it outward, the more we will draw people and events to us to reflect that. The way we begin to interrupt this pattern is to simply notice that we are engaging it in the moment. Catch yourself as your emotional signal rises and remind yourself that you are interacting with your own perception. Notice that you are creating conflict and are therefore fighting with yourself. What are you fighting with within yourself? Often it is an issue of acceptance. Doing this will be a challenge, for in our moments of familiarity and passion we are unpracticed at paying attention to ourselves. We have been turning the signals of our emotions (sad, mad, glad, etc) into weapons against ourselves.

The following example is taken verbatim from session 800 of the Elias Transcripts:
“Hypothetically shall we say, two individuals may be engaging conversation. One individual may be expressing in a manner that is perceived by the other individual as irritating, initially. Therefore, the second individual is expressing an emotion of irritation. What is being acknowledged and received is the signal; the message is being ignored. The ringing of the phone is being acknowledged, but the receiver has not been engaged. Therefore, the signal of the emotion, which is what you term to be the feeling, continues and builds.

Now; as the message has not been received, the communication has not been recognized, and the signal continues. The individual begins responding to the signal.

Now; the signal has been identified as irritation. The response is to be projecting outward that energy in intensity.

Now; as the individual automatically responds to the signal and projects that energy outward, it is projected to the other individual, the first individual, and it is relayed once again back to the second individual. The second individual continues to NOT receive the message, the communication, and is merely paying attention to the signal.

The signal thusly becomes more intense, and the individual experiencing this unreceived message or communication and the continuation of the signal turns that signal into an expression of energy which is created in the form of a type of weapon, so to speak, to themselves, for they begin to block their own energy. They begin to discount themselves. They begin a lack of acceptance of self, devaluing their experience and their worth, and denying their choice, holding themselves in the position of merely continuing the signal.”

Elias goes on to say that one of the individuals in this example may stop the emotional signal, but because he/she didn’t receive the communication the signal will arise again, but in a different scenario. We constantly provide ourselves with communications to familiarize us with ourselves, but if we don’t pay attention, the same communication will be repeated over and over in infinitely creative ways. So, pay attention to the mirrors and reflections, for they are the movie screens upon which we project our individual communications.
Bill Marshall

Mirrors and Reflections

If each of us individually creates our own reality then Everything is either a reflection or a mirror action. Definition Alert! Definition Alert! When someone, something or some action is a mirror it is telling us that it/they are projecting the same energy you are projecting. If you are angry and the person you’re engaged with is angry then that person is a mirror for you and you are a mirror for them. Most of the time, however, what we interact with is a reflection. We present ourselves reflections to allow us to notice ourselves and how we respond. The problem is, we don’t notice because of our intense belief in cause and effect. Our attention is rarely on ourselves. In a reflection a person may be projecting anger to you, but you do not project anger back; you merely present yourself an opportunity to receive that energy and choose how you respond. If you respond automatically with anger it becomes a mirror action.

Ronnie is a pro-Bush right-winger and Bonnie is an anti-Bush left-winger. Now I know you’re going to assign good and bad labels to Ronnie and Bonnie depending upon your own preferences and opinions, but try to hold them at bay. This is called acceptance. Ronnie and Bonnie wind up sharing a table at Starbucks and begin a conversation about their political views. Unbeknownst to Ronnie, Bonnie has been reading my blogs and understands that her beliefs represent her truths, but they are not cosmic truths, and therefore are not absolutes. As their discussion progresses Ronnie’s blood pressure rises. Having not read my blogs (or any of the Seth and Elias material) he holds his beliefs as absolutes, and if Bonnie disagrees then she must be anti-American, anti-family and, of course, anti-values. His anger rises and he moves into competition mode trying to “win over” Bonnie to his point of view.

Bonnie, knowing her positions are not absolutes, is not trying to sway Ronnie. She merely shares her opinions and preferences and in so doing is in cooperation mode. Definition Alert! Definition Alert! As Elias put is: “cooperation is not teamwork! Cooperation is not what other individuals can do to acquiesce to you. Cooperation is what YOU can choose to allow yourself to continue your own direction and to continue with your own guidelines, uninterrupted by other individuals’ choices or expressions or behaviors, and not expecting other individuals to change what they express.”

Bonnie accepts (non-judgment) Ronnie’s positions without changing her own or attempting to get Ronnie to see the “rightness” of her point of view. Ronnie is a reflection for Bonnie because she is not matching his projected anger. Since she is open and accepting of both herself and Ronnie, his energy is buffered and flows through easily. Bonnie configured Ronnie’s energy through her perception similarly to the way it was projected, but through her acceptance it felt nothing like it does in The Forgotten Self’s world. Bonnie drew Ronnie’s energy as an exercise to view how she takes it in. It was a reflection. Her attention remained on herself and Ronnie, and so no automatic response was triggered. In this case the automatic response might be anger and competition as we saw with Ronnie. Bonnie doesn’t see this as a mirror action because she has not engaged her automatic responses (automatic responses are without thought) and remains in cooperation with Ronnie.

But Ronnie is another story. His interaction with Bonnie is also a reflection, an opportunity to view his own responses. Ronnie, however is on autopilot. His truths are solidified as absolutes. You know the thinking: “The world would be a better place if everyone thought as I do.” He is so used to judging differences he cannot see Bonnie’s point of view as simply being another way of being.He views his truths as absolutes, which makes him non-accepting and eliminates choice.
Bill Marshall

To Create or to Co-Create, That is the Question.

To create or to co-create; that is the question. Whether ‘tis nobler in the mind to suffer the slings and arrows of outrageous fortune, or to take arms against a sea of troubles, and by opposing end them? Shakespeare was on to something; or at least he was on the trail to something. By now you must be aware that I am making a case for creating ALL of your reality, which means you’re not a victim; there are no accidents, no coincidences, no invasions by mindless germs. If it happens to me I did it. If you hit me over the head with a 2x4, I did it. If I’m stung by a wasp, I did it. Me, me, me; not you, you, you. And it’s all done through our beliefs (not thought) and the projection of our perception.

Most of my life, however, was spent believing that I created some things, but not all things. If I wanted a can of refried beans I went to the store and bought some, but I certainly didn’t create the beans. If I chose to drive down a country road I knew it was my choice, but if a deer jumped into the road it was the deer’s idea, not mine. Stupid deer! If someone lifted my wallet and stole my identity it sure wasn’t my choice. Damn thief!! In a way I miss not blaming anyone or anything anymore. It’s a habit most of the human race has grown fond of. It sort of takes us off our own hook, ya know. At first glance it appears so much easier to cast a wide net of blame, but the problem lies in our need to cast the net over and over, ad infinitum. When we finally realize we do it all then maybe we’ll begin to spend some time figuring out how it is we do it. (read my blogs)

Many folks that are familiar with the reams of information about creating one’s own reality bandy the term “co-create” around as though someone or something else is helping each one of us create our individual realities. Each of us may participate in an event with another individual or in a mass event such as the 2005 Tsunami, but the actual physical creation is done individually. The co-creation goes back to my posts on agreements and choices. In an event as powerful as the Tsunami that rocked the lands bordering the Indian Ocean there was an agreement within consciousness (that’s all of us) to have the event take place. That’s it! We didn’t all pool our collective energies and raise an arc of darkness 1600 kilometers long called the Sunda Trench, where the Indo-Australian tectonic plate slowly slips beneath the Burma plate and create a Tsunami. We agreed to have one and then each individual created their own. There wasn’t one Tsunami that each individual perceived differently. It wasn’t a co-created Tsunami. It was an agreed upon Tsunami, but the creation of it was individual.

So, what we call co-creating is in actuality an agreement made in a different area of consciousness. It is not a pooled creation. It is a pooled agreement. When I look into the sky at night and see stars and planets and galaxies they are not co-created. I create them, just as you create yours. Consciousness is energy and is not a conglomeration of separate parts. It is a unity, but there are eddies within that unity. I, as an eddy, project my energy to you as an offering. You, also an eddy, through the projection of your perception configure my projected energy in any way you choose. Most often you configure it in the manner in which I projected it, which is why there is so often consensus on what we jointly experience. So, do we each create all of our reality? Yes. Is there co-creation? No, but there are infinite agreements.
Bill Marshall
Take a look at my book, The Forgotten Self US and UK

Square Pegs In Round Holes

The Strange Case of Stigmata
Imagine, if you will, shopping at your favourite mall. You find a blouse you know will go perfectly with your new skirt. As you hand the sales clerk your credit card, holes begin forming in the palms of both hands and blood drips onto the glass countertop. This is the stuff of horror films, because it completely shatters our worldview. If it cannot be rationally explained it becomes one of those ‘little things’ that we choose to ignore. Our view of reality is not large enough to hold it. The phenomenon of stigmata cannot happen to us, because we don’t have the strong belief that would allow it to happen. It seems only to happen to those with strong religious beliefs, beliefs powerful enough to override the prevailing beliefs of the holder.

St. Francis of Assisi was the first to display the wounds of the crucifixion in his hands. Hundreds since then have also spontaneously displayed the wounds in various places in their hands and feet. This is an exceptionally well-documented phenomenon and is freely acknowledged by the Roman Catholic Church. The interesting point about stigmata is that the holes form in the hands and not in the wrists. In all of the old paintings of the crucifixion from the eighth century on, the spikes are driven through Jesus' hands, although recent research indicates that this placement would not have held the body. Additionally, archaeologists have unearthed crucified bodies with the spikes driven through the wrists; the only location that could support the slumping weight of the body. Stigmata occurred in the hands because that is where St. Francis and others believed the spikes were driven. If stigmata were ‘God-given’ one would expect the wounds to appear in the wrists. Stigmata are less a miracle than it is a sudden manifestation of a powerful belief.

Gemma Galgani, an Italian stigmatic, had wounds that were an exact replica of her favourite crucifix. As with all stigmatics the open wounds never decayed or became infected. What becomes of our belief in the harmful effects of bacteria, or are we really only victims of our own beliefs? St. Veronica Giuliani, an 18th-century stigmatic, could open and close, on command, a large severe wound in her side at the same location the ancient artists depicted Jesus’ spear wound. Theresa Neumann, a renowned stigmatic, had blood flowing from her hand and foot wounds exactly as the blood would have flowed had she been nailed to a cross, that is, across the palms and not down the fingertips, and down the foot and over the toes. This occurred even when she was laying down, which meant her blood had to flow uphill. What happened to gravity? It is not as though these incidents have been falsely reported. They have been witnessed by thousands of people and documented by the Church. The evidence is piling up that these are not interventions by God, but rather manifestations of exceptionally strong beliefs; strong enough to overpower the prevailing belief. Could it be that Seth and Elias is right? Could it be that we create all of our reality based on our belief systems? If so, then we are at the point in our understanding where a baby takes its first step. We create, but we are doing it unconsciously. We need to begin to unearth all those beliefs that make us tick.

Paramahansa Yogananda, one of the first prominent yogis of India to come to the U.S. said, “whatever your powerful mind believes very intensely instantly comes to pass.” This is exactly what Seth says through Jane Roberts. We are enamoured by our own belief systems, and anything that resides outside the system is either a hoax or a miracle. St. Augustine said, “A miracle doesn't go against nature. It goes against what we believe of nature.” Put another way, Seth says, “Our beliefs about reality are not necessarily attributes of reality.”

Facts conform to our beliefs. It is not the other way around. As Meister Eckhard said, “God creates the whole world anew in each moment,” and in doing so it is no great trick to provide us with the evidence of every new belief that pops up. “But,” you say, “The evidence is there first and then we base our beliefs on the evidence.” Sorry, that’s small god stuff, not big God stuff. Big God has given us free will and as a belief (let’s call it a theory in this instance) occurs in the mind of just one scientist the evidence will be provided if the belief is strong enough. As more of us believe the theory, more evidence will appear. Stigmata and all other “miracles” can be understood in no other way.
Bill Marshall

Dewey, Louie and Control

The following example was derived from session 1404 of the Elias transcripts.
Louie is a control freak and so is his brother, Dewey. Their uncle Donald, who is a ducky kind of guy, has told them that despite appearances they are always in control. Louie has been feeling lately that he’d like to let go of his control issues as he suspects they are limiting him from creating what he wants. Realizing that Uncle Donald has been around the pond a few times he seeks his advice.

Uncle Donald questions Louie and finds that many times Louie wants to do what Dewey suggests, but he is so stuck in his attachment to control that he doesn’t do it because Dewy suggested it. Louie wants to feel connected to Dewy and to others, but the need to control blocks his desire. Uncle Donald has spoken to Louie before about this and reminds him that he has turned his belief in control into an absolute and has moved into incorporating that belief as a truth. Uncle Donald tells Louie that beliefs, in and of themselves, are not bad and that his truth – his belief in control – actually serves him well in many situations. Louie’s truths, not just the truth of control, have been chosen in alignment with his intent and value fulfillment and as such contain many of his preferences. Some of Louie’s expressions of control he will view as beneficial and some he will view as limiting.

Uncle Donald reminds Louie that certain behaviors of his, such as planning, being aware of his goals, organization and general movement throughout his day , Louie finds as beneficial and that he should not just try to shitcan (Uncle Donald is a colorful guy) the belief. Donald reinforces the idea that Louie’s beliefs, especially his truths, are not his enemy. He tells Louie it is not the belief itself (control) that creates his problem, but rather how he manipulates energy that is associated with this belief in control. Louie needs to pay attention to what his belief in control influences, like not implementing Dewey’s suggestion simply because Dewey suggested it. This would be a negative influence of the belief and as such Louie could choose differently in the moment it arises if he pays attention to himself.

Uncle Donald tells Louie that he does not create Dewey’s reality; but that he does create his own reality. In this, Louie has choices whenever he interacts, not only with Dewy, but with any other individual. Louie looks confused and so Uncle Donald tells him that Dewey projects his energy toward Louie, but since Louie creates his own reality he can do whatever he wants with Dewey’s projected energy. This includes reconfiguring Dewey’s energy in any way that aligns with Louie’s preferences. When Louie projects his attention to Dewey, who is projecting control, and Louie’s energy is also projected in control then Louie is setting up an expectation that he wants to control Dewey. This, Uncle Donald tells him, sets him up for disappointment for he does not create Dewey’s reality. Louie only creates his own reality. Louie’s only action is how he RECEIVES Dewey’s projected energy, for he cannot determine or control how Dewey will project. That is Dewey’s choice.

What IS Louie’s choice is how he receives Dewey’s projected energy. How he receives it will determine how Louie responds to Dewey. Louie tells his uncle that he experiences Dewey as trying to control or maneuver him, but he fights it because it is he who wants to control and maneuver Dewey. Uncle Donald asks Louie what he wants in the moment that Dewey is projecting his energy. Louie replies that he wants Dewey to stop being so bossy, but even more than that he wants a real interaction where they flow freely. Uncle Donald reminds Louie that it is he who creates his own reality and that it is he who has the choice to manipulate Dewey’s projected energy in any way he desires. This is his REAL control.

Uncle Donald then tells Louie that the way he can create a free flowing interaction with Dewey begins with a genuine appreciation of both himself and Dewey. Louie doesn’t have to appreciate what Dewey is projecting, for often he is projecting control, which Louie doesn’t like. Appreciation, Donald reminds Louie, is a component of Love, where each individual appreciates the reality of the other and that although their directions in life may be different they are both of Essence and as such are connected. On a more practical level Donald tells Louie that in the moment he begins to feel conflict with Dewey he should move his attention to notice just one thing that he appreciates about Dewey and himself. He should then express that appreciation, which will reconfigure the energy. The appreciation moves Louie’s attention and it alters his perception. Since perception projects our reality, then reality itself is altered.

As Louie allows Dewey’s energy to approach, he holds it at a distance because he rejects it. He perceives Dewey’s energy as a command that requires him to respond in a certain manner. Louie therefore blocks the projected energy of Dewey and doesn’t allow himself to receive or RECONFIGURE the energy. To receive Dewey’s energy, Uncle Donald tells him, he must be open to it, or as Donald describes it, Louie must be exposed. Louie feels this would be a negative aspect of his truth or his belief in control. Exposure to Louie means giving up control. Donald corrects Louie by telling him that in order to receive energy he must be open to it or otherwise Louie creates a shield. Rather than becoming a window, Louie’s energy field becomes a shield. He can't reconfigure energy he is not open to receiving.

Individuals naturally repel any projected energy that acts as a command to do something they either want to do or don’t want to do, especially if control is one of their truths. This is because every individual knows in the deepest part of themselves that they absolutely Do direct their own actions. Conflict arises when an individual allows another to direct their choices. When this happens Louie reacts rather than evaluates. Uncle Donald gives Louie an example of how he would probably react to Dewey if Dewey suggested they go for a walk in the woods. “I can picture it now,” Donald says. There you would be, wanting to walk in the woods with Dewey, but saying to yourself, “I must be in control. I’m not going to allow Dewey to suggest anything that I want to do. If any suggesting is going to be made, it’s going to be made by me. I refuse to enjoy the woods with Dewey even though it causes me conflict not to do so.” Louie laughs because he knows Uncle Donald is right on the mark.

Even though Dewey offered the invitation in genuine affection, Louie didn’t take it in that way. There are other times that Dewey is being commanding, but not this time. Donald reminds Louie to be aware of his own energy and how Dewey’s energy is being projected. Is it genuine or is it commanding? The main indicator, however, is Louie’s own energy. If Louie notices twinges that trigger the onset of conflict, irritation or anxiety then these are the indicators that he is generating some expression within himself. It is this internal expression that Louie needs to evaluate. It is this evaluation that will provide Louie with the information necessary to determine what he is responding to within himself and also give him a clearer picture of the energy that Dewey projects. Louie’s freedom lies in his paying attention to himself, for it is always energy that he responds to, his own and Dewey’s.

Finally Uncle Donald reminds Louie that he is a young man of great passion and holds the capacity for connected interaction and affection. He tells Louie to drop his shield and to expose himself, for in his exposure lies his freedom. The exposure allows free expression, and in that open energy, which is projected outward, it will be recognized by others. They wish the same openness and freedom, and naturally draw themselves to those that express it.
Bill Marshall

P.S. I encourage you to take a look at my new book, The Forgotten Self. You can check it out in either the UK or the US.

Pro Choice

Choice is freedom and so I guess you could say I’m pro choice. And yes, this includes a woman’s choice to abort a fetus or to bring it to full term. I am also pro life, which is to say I am against the death penalty, but I’m for a person’s right to terminate their own life. Having said that, I understand perfectly that my choices are obviously not everyone’s choices, nor should they be. I understand that my beliefs are my truths, but they are not absolute. In any moment I can choose differently, but to do that I must recognize my beliefs and understand my motivations and that It Matters Not, which is not to say nothing matters.

A key component of pro choice and pro life is Acceptance and Cooperation. Acceptance is non-judgment and cooperation says that I can have
what I choose and you can have what you choose even if they are polar opposites. It does not mean we each compromise our beliefs and truths to reach some middle ground. Acceptance presupposes an understanding that we are not pawns on God’s chessboard. We are the game itself. It presupposes that your moves are in alignment with your intent and value fulfillment as much as my moves are in alignment with mine. There are no checkmates except those we impose upon ourselves; and we impose those checkmates by not recognizing the beliefs that feed our projectors and by not accepting our choices and the choices of others.

In looking at the pro choice/pro life “debate” I think we can all see the beliefs that undergird each position’s point of view. There are no bad beliefs, but how many of you judge the beliefs of the other side? How many pro lifers judge a woman who aborts a fetus as being Godless and a baby killer? How many pro choicers judge the pro lifers for trying to impose their beliefs on you, and for having a tiny understanding of God, and for being non-accepting? We are mirrors of each other, for neither side of this debate has moved into the realm of Acceptance. The pro life/pro choice “debate” is not so much about abortion as it is about Acceptance. WE both judge and that is what this polarization is all about; viewing our inability to accept.

BUT! If one is to buy into what all these posts in 21st Century Reality are about then there are some preconditions. The first and the biggest is awakening to the knowing that we are so much more than we believe we are, and the second is that God doesn’t need our help in anything, including whether to have a baby or to abort a fetus. Thirdly we need to examine our belief that this is a place of learning; a stepping stone – so to speak – to a higher spiritual existence.We are not lowly; striving to get higher. We already are higher. These beliefs, when unexamined, create tremendous automatic responses and judgment in almost all of our behaviors. We are here to explore and to experience. Everyone wins, despite appearances. Beliefs are not bad and they are not meant to be disposed of. They are meant to be examined so that we can choose differently if we so desire. So, here’s to PRO CHOICE, but not in the abstract outer construction that we see on our TV screens.
Bill Marshall

P.S. If you haven't already you might check out my book, The Forgotten Self, at Amazon US and UK

IRAQ

My previous post talked about 911 through the eyes of the Remembered Self. You may have noticed that the strike on the Pentagon symbolically represented our beliefs about protection, or defense, if you prefer. If you dig deeper into what you believe about protection you might find that supporting that belief is an even more fundamental belief that revolves around the issue of trust. A lack of trust in our ability to create what we want results in the emotion of fear. Whenever we experience fear it always involves a lack of trust. Our lack of trust in our ability to create what we want is presented to us outwardly through all forms of our vaunted MEDIA and in everyday living. We protect ourselves from germs of all sorts; from tumors that we believe come uninvited; from terrorists; from burglars; and from anything any everything that has the potential – we believe – to harm us. If you hold those beliefs you better batten down the hatches for you will express them in what you do and what you invite into your life. Underlying this massive lack of trust is our belief that we can control some things, but not all things. Shit Happens! Shit does happen, but it only happens because we don’t know what it is we are doing. We do it all, but The Forgotten Self doesn’t know how it is created. We are the pilots of our own vehicles, but our vehicle has blown a head gasket and we don’t know how to fix it.

The emotion of fear and the belief that we need to be protected was the fuel that drove the US to attack Iraq. There are other, possibly larger beliefs, which also played a part in our decision. Weaving its way through our collective psyche is the strong religious belief in The Good Samaritan; that we are our brother’s keeper and if he can’t extract himself from his dire straits then it is our responsibility to do it for him. What does this say? It says that the Iraqis are not creating their individual and collective world the way we think they should create it. It says we know better than they what is best for them. It says we don’t ACCEPT what they have created in the Middle East any more than the terrorists don’t accept us. It says shit happens and it is up to us Good Samaritans to wash off the shit.

I refer you back to my post on choices and agreements because nothing can happen in this world without agreements. These are not agreements where Iraq agrees to have the US invade by sitting down at a table and saying, “sure, come right in, we’re really looking forward to some good old death and destruction.” It doesn’t work this way. The agreements take place within another area of consciousness and they are made to the benefit of every individual involved in order to move them toward their own intent and value fulfillment. Everything is a communication to self and we jointly create a war to present our beliefs in stark relief.

We could not have attacked Iraq had it not been agreed upon throughout the entirety of consciousness. So, let’s go to where Eckhart Tolle tells us our power lies. Let’s go to NOW. We are there and that is what is happening now. There is no greater waste of energy than the blame game. It throws us into the past where we have no power to create. The East and the West is as polarized as is the US itself. To what purpose are we polarized? Old thinking says one side will win, one side will lose and if not the house of cards will come tumbling down. If we create it all then there is a purpose to the polarization. Think of it this way. There is a tribe of 100 people and all but one pretty much think the same way. It is easy for the 99 to ignore the 1, but when 50 think one way and the other 50 think the opposite way there is no way to ignore the split any longer. WE have to pay attention.

This is why we have created the polarization. It forces us to look at our beliefs and at each other and to look at how our beliefs act in creating our lives. Beliefs are not absolutes unless you don’t know it is a belief that is ordering your life. Paying attention to what I do will show me the belief that is underlying what it is I created in the moment. It is my belief; my truth, but it is not absolute, just as your belief is your truth, but it also is not an absolute. Cooperation means both my truth and your truth, although polar opposites, are true, but not absolute. Hold to your truth if that is your choice, but judge not the other whose truth is also true. This is Acceptance and this is what the Iraq war is putting starkly before us to see. Do we see Acceptance, or do we judge? Do we see truth as an absolute or as an individual matter with no right or wrong?

I’m not affiliated with any religion, but I do know when a religious figure speaks a truth. “Judge not lest ye be judged” is probably the most ignored of the Christian tenets. And who judges us? We do. And how do we do it? By drawing to us that which we judge. So, hold fast to your truths if that is your choice, but let go of the judgment you attach to those that do not hold your truths. Do that and we will begin to see the result of a world unjudged and accepted.
Bill Marshall

911 and the Remembered Self

This is a difficult post to write, just as a post on the Holocaust would be difficult to write. The pain, suffering and anger we feel over such tragic events is real. We know it is real because we have all experienced it, both subjectively in the inner world of our psyches and objectively in the outer world of physical matter. We know the pain, sorrow and anger at having our fathers, mothers, brothers, sisters and friends ripped from our lives with malice aforethought. We rage at those who have perpetrated such an enormous act of human destruction in the name of God. We rage at God and wonder if science is right in claiming we’re all just a small cog in a mindless machine. But then we recant because a part of us recoils at the possible finality of death. We must see those we lost in a better place. We simply must, for if they are not then all hope is lost.

I write this because The Forgotten Self’s world gives no satisfying answers to the soul as to why so many innocents should be cast upon the ruins. I write this to try to make sense of what appears at first, second and third glance to make no sense at all; to have no meaning at all. If, in telling the symbolic tale of 911 through The Remembered Self’s eyes, I should further wound those who have lost loved ones on that day, I offer my deepest apology. It was not my intent. My intent is to offer meaning to their death. My intent is to offer meaning to an apparently meaningless world.

A Few Reminders
The Remembered Self’s world is unimaginably complex, varied, intricate and creative. We are unimaginably complex, varied, intricate and creative. Time and space is a construct of consciousness. Consciousness is a’priori to matter, which is to say that matter is a symbolic objective construct of a subjective inner world of feelings and beliefs. We play by the rules in physical existence and the primary rule is that our beliefs create our reality. Who you are is multi-dimensional. You exist in more than the one world and the one time your five senses perceive. You and the creator are one, and yet individuality is never lost. Nothing ever happens to us without our agreement, for the multiverse is cooperative, not competitive. All actions exist as a probability and any probability can and will be actualized. All of eternity exists in the spacious present, which means our point of power is in the present moment. There is no death.

The following quote are the closing remarks by Seth in his and Jane Robert’s book, “Dreams, Evolution and Value Fulfillment – Volume Two.”

“You have lived in a world in which you believed you must struggle to survive – and so you have struggled.
“You have believed that the natural contours of nature were somehow antagonistic to your own existence, so that left in the hands of nature alone you would lose your way. You have believed that in the very framework of your psychology. In your experiences, therefore, all of these things have largely proven true.
“Nothing taught that you were creatures. I have been trying to lead you into a new threshold of perception, where the old myths of evolution can be seen as outmoded, ancient or forsaken castles amid a forest of beliefs - a forest that is indeed itself a magically formed one. The forest is the world of your own imagination, surely, the imagination of your minds, and yet given force and power by the innate creativity that rises up from an inner world that represents much more truly the origins of man and beast. The world has been largely hidden by the camouflages shed by science and religion alike, but in your times the landscape began to appear so dark and threatening, so forbidden and alien to your own desires, that its end seemed all the more inevitable and swift.
“I hope to have given you in this book a far more gallant and true picture, that represents the origin of your life, structure and being and thought. The inner world of reality, the world of dreams, presents a model of existence in which new energy, vitality, and being is everywhere apparent, ready to come forward to form new transformations, new combinations of energy and desire.
“That inner psychological universe is a psychic gestalt, propelled, formed, sustained or driven by value fulfillment, love and desire, by the loving values that have no limit. The universe does not give up on itself, or on any of its creatures. It is ruled by a different set of values, and by an inner cooperative exuberance.
“You may need some time before the old beliefs become less prominent, and finally fall into their proper decay – a decay, incidentally, that does indeed have its own kind of majesty, energy and beauty. But the inner natural leanings of all consciousness within the realms of your being now yearn for constructive change, clearer vision, to experience again their inherent sense of corporeal spirituality, physical and psychic grace. They want to sense again the effortless motion that is their natural birthright.”

With those words let’s see what the events of 911 might look like in The Remembered Self’s world.

The Symbolism of 911
Two things are of importance in determining the meaning of the events of 911. We must first understand the belief system that created the event, and secondly we must understand the symbolism of the targets selected. I’ll address the belief systems that created the event after I go into the symbolism of the targets. Whether the terrorists consciously chose September 11 because the date represented our national emergency call number, we may never know. What we do know is that the date of the attack contains the same numbers we call when we need help, and that call for help is always answered. Very few Americans missed the significance of the date. Whether the terrorists planned it that way or not does not matter. What matters is the significance of the date in the mass consciousness of the world’s most powerful country. 911 is our cry for help. But what kind of help is it we are crying for? We are the richest nation in the world, so I doubt it would be a cry for more wealth. We are the most powerful country in the world, so I doubt it is a cry for us to grow stronger. Keep in mind that a belief in wealth presupposes a belief in poverty, and a belief in power presupposes a belief in weakness. When you are already the richest and most powerful, asking for more of each goes against The Remembered Self’s idea of value fulfillment where each and every creature in the universe is driven in a cooperative venture to fulfill not only their own highest value, but in doing so fulfills all others as well.

In The Forgotten Self’s world bad things fill us with rage, bitterness and hatred, and a need for revenge, even though that is not what they come into our lives to do. Nothing is ever lost in The Remembered Self’s world, and so our task after an event such as 911 is to uncover what it is we are trying to tell ourselves. I’ll talk about our response to the events of 911 later, but for now I wish to stick to uncovering the reasons we created the tragedy. What did our cry for help in the outer world of physical manifestation represent in the inner world of subjective reality? The answer may lie symbolically in the targets that were actually hit. Oddly enough, they were the world’s symbols of wealth and power and protection; the twin towers of the World Trade Center and the Pentagon.

Keep in mind that in The Remembered Self’s world the events of 911 were a joint cooperative venture between the terrorists and us, and neither is to be judged. Beliefs create reality. No life is ever lost without the individual’s deepest consent. This is an important point if any sense at all is to be made of this tragedy. The only meaning to be gleaned from The Forgotten Self’s world is confirmation of our deeply held belief in good and evil, in victimhood and mindless destruction. In The Forgotten Self’s world thousands lost their lives long before their allotted time because of the insanity of twelve Muslim Zealots. We believe they are evil, or at the least, fanatics, and they believe we are the minions of Satan. And so, as in Israel and Palestine, as in Northern Ireland, we begin an endless cycle of attack and counterattack. Tit for tat ad infinitum. We believe in terrorism and we believe in victims and therefore they are created and recreated by the energy our judgment gives to them.

Wealth and power, in and of themselves, are not evil, and so in selecting the World Trade Center and the Pentagon the terrorists and us had to be sending a different message to the collective consciousness of the world. And remember, the collective consciousness of the world was in on the act, although not through thought. Wealth and power is an issue, however, if in seeking it the acquisition robs others of their own value fulfillment. Consider Enron, Worldcom and Adelphia as but three examples of large corporations that had lost sight of the true meaning of value fulfillment. Consider a world where wealth and power becomes a substitute for meaning. If we are really just a cosmic coincidence, the offshoot of a random combination of primordial chemicals; and if evolutionary theory is correct in its supposition of the survival of the fittest, then the pursuit of wealth and power, not for the sake of the whole, but for the individual, is not a problem. It remains a Forgotten Self kind of thing. It is simply a natural outcome of what science has been trying to tell us all along. In The Remembered Self’s world wealth is not bad. Its effect, however, if not acquired with value fulfillment in mind, becomes a violation.

Wealth and possessions become a problem only in so far as we become attached to the point where its acquisition hurts others and keeps us unconscious. And if you think it is only the wealthy, or the large corporations that forsake value fulfillment, think again. When President Clinton tried to pass a universal health care bill it was soundly defeated by both the House and the Senate because the cost of covering all Americans would be too high. It was you and I that defeated that bill, not the hundred men and women of the Senate and not the 450 men and women of the House. We are Buffy St. Marie’s Universal Soldier. It is, after all, you and I, that killed the Kennedys, as Mick Jagger pointed out in Sympathy for the Devil. There is a deep part of us that has always known that wealth and power does not bring meaning into one’s life. In The Forgotten Self’s world we ask, “what does rampant malnutrition in the third world have to do with me?” When we believe we are all separate, as we do in The Forgotten Self’s world, one country consuming one third of the world’s resources is not a problem. What is the meaning of a bloated African baby whose eyes have become a banquet for flies? Does our consumption of one third of the world’s resources contribute to that malnourished baby’s value fulfillment? When we see the conditions in the third world countries our natural guilt rises to our throats, for it is a violation that any human being should live under such conditions when the resources exist to change it.

The world’s resources are not evenly distributed, and so wealth becomes a problem, or, better put, the belief in wealth becomes a problem. For, as long as we believe that wealth is good, we will create poverty to offset it. There is a deep understanding in every human being on earth that meaning cannot be found in a dollar bill, but a dollar bill can, if used properly, do a lot of good.

That starving African baby creates its own reality as well, and to believe otherwise is to rob it of its individual power. Everything is experience, but that is not to say we have no responsibility in our own creations. Every human being on the planet participated in the selection of the targets of 911, and in that sense the events were both individually and jointly created. We chose the twin towers for they represent the enormous structure of our belief systems regarding trade, finance and their necessity in our lives. Our beliefs in the area of trade, finance and wealth have been invisible, which is to say we held them as facts and not beliefs. We see them as absolutes, and yet nothing is an absolute. In The Remembered Self’s world we created in the objective world an event of such magnitude as to lay bare our belief systems before us.

The Pentagon

The combined mass of the World Trade Center made it the largest building in the world and therefore symbolic of our most culturally ingrained belief system. The Pentagon is also one of the largest buildings in the world, but sprawls outward instead of upward. At first glance it appears to represent our belief in the need for power, but real power in The Forgotten Self’s world was to be found in the World Trade Center. The belief is: Wealth is power. The Pentagon, however, represents another core belief. It is the belief in our need for protection. The belief in our need for protection is secondary to an even larger and more invisible belief. In The Forgotten Self’s world this immense belief is supported by an even bigger and deadlier belief. The first is our belief in victimhood, which is under girded by the larger belief in our powerlessness.

In the western world, which in general is considered the first world as opposed to the third or the second world, we have locks for everything; cars, homes, bikes, suitcases, computers, bathrooms, phones, windows… You name it and we have a way to protect it from others. The biggest and yet the most invisible lock, however, is the lock we have around ourselves. It is interesting that the Pentagon is laid out in such a way that its five sided concrete and steel outer shell surrounds an open courtyard. Symbolically the Pentagon becomes a boundary for open space, just as the bars of a cell keep a convict locked up. How much more fully could we experience life if the walls of our belief in victimhood and powerlessness and our need for protection came tumbling down? How much more could we do in the world if the energy that goes into building a massive military machine was spent in such a way that our value fulfillment added to all others?

Because of the nature of the Pentagon building, that of sprawling outward, the jetliner could not possibly destroy the whole structure. Symbolically it tried to open a window in the structure of our beliefs. It punched a hole in the perimeter and allowed those of us in the central courtyard a glimpse of a larger world, a Remembered Self world. That is, if we were so inclined to begin to think outside the box. It opened a symbolic door and gave us a choice; stay in the central courtyard, rebuild the outer wall and remain in The Forgotten Self’s world, or, keep the outer wall symbolically open, thereby affording a larger view of reality and gradually move into The Remembered Self’s world. It is not encouraging that we rebuilt the outer wall with an almost frantic haste. This may be an indication of the strength of our belief in the need for protection.

The Implements of Destruction
If everything in the objective world combines to form a symbolic manifestation of the feelings, emotions and beliefs of the subjective inner world, then the jets of 911 are highly significant. Could it be that they represent consciousness itself? They are solid structures of enormous power that disengage us from the grip of gravity, and move us wherever we wish to go at a speed we could not sustain by ourselves. It is much like our imaginations, or, better put, like consciousness itself. The jetliner is a perfect symbol of freedom as well. It has allowed us to experience first hand far off lands and exotic people who think and act differently than us. Not better. Not worse. Just differently.

The bird is an ancient symbol of spirit, and the jetliner is in every sense a man-bird. We have chosen the perfect symbol to bring down a belief structure that no longer serves us. If we can begin our transition into The Remembered Self’s world we can see the jetliners not as implements of destruction, but as symbols of consciousness, freedom and spirit. Keep in mind that in The Remembered Self’s world there is no death. There is only experience.

The Forgotten Self’s thinking asks the good verses evil question. Why would consciousness, freedom and spirit create such an evil? The answer can only be found in The Remembered Self’s world. In the movie Silence of the Lambs, Anthony Hopkins portrays the epitome of evil in our world, Hannibal Lechter, but we don’t really associate Hopkins with the character he portrays. In The Forgotten Self’s world Mohammed Atta, the mastermind of the 911 plot, is small, powerless and only Mohammed Atta. We don’t see the metaphoric Anthony Hopkins underneath. We also do not see our cooperative participation in the play. In a movie everyone knows they participate not as themselves, but in a role. In The Forgotten Self’s world we maintain that the role we play is the essential us. There are no Anthony Hopkins portraying the Hannibal Lecters. In The Forgotten Self’s world the movie is the real deal.

The jets were used in a way that no one, other than the fanatics, could have imagined. In a way this is similar to our current conception of consciousness. We see consciousness as a by-product of brain, certainly powerful, but nothing without the body. Until 911 we understood the power of the jet in a different way than we did after 911. Now we know it can destroy as well as bring us to soaring heights. But, this is also the power of consciousness. In the hands of skilled pilots it can create the best humanity has to offer. In the hands of madmen it creates the worst in us. It is all us, however, and unfortunately there have only been a few skilled pilots of consciousness. Jesus and the Buddha are considered two of the best. We all need to become skilled pilots of consciousness so that everything we create will add not only to our value fulfillment, but to all others as well.

Heroes by Choice – Heroes by Chance
The above heading was the title of a CNN one-year anniversary program on the heroes of September 11, 2001. The heroes of choice, of course, were the fine men and women that paid with the price of their own lives attempting to save others. Whether in uniform or not, these were the people that knew they could not live another day if they did not give their all to help. These were the people that knew the answer to Schopenhauer’s metaphysical question: How is it, he asks, that an individual can so forget himself and his own safety that he will put himself and his life in jeopardy to save another from death or pain – as though that other’s life were his own? Such a one is acting, Schopenhauer answers, out of an instinctive recognition of the truth that he and that other in fact are one.

Heroes have always had one foot in The Remembered Self’s world if but only for a moment. Sure, they were afraid if they had time to think of their own fear, but their fear was secondary to their deeper understanding of the true nature of reality. No, they could not articulate it as it is stated in all of my posts, but their actions speak symbolically of their ultimate knowing. The heroes of 911 are no different than the soldier that throws himself on a live grenade to save his buddies. Heroes go against evolutionary theory that says passing on your own gene pool is paramount to all individuals of every species. Heroes go against the evolutionary idea of survival of the fittest. Heroes are often the most fit of us and yet they willingly sacrifice themselves for a greater good. If survival was what we are all about then everyone would have been climbing over each other to get out, the strongest stepping on the weakest. Heroes fly in the face of our most commonly held ideas of who and what we are. They are part of the evidence that we are more than we think we are.

The CNN program referred to them as heroes of choice, but heroes rarely think before they act. It is almost as if they have no choice, for their actions are usually immediate, like the soldier throwing himself on the grenade. The grenade, with a fuse from three to five seconds, does not allow the hero time to mull over his choices. He acts from the deepest part of his being with the understanding that he will die only to this particular focus of his physical self. This is not Forgotten Self thinking, but rather automatic Remembered Self thinking.

The heroes of United Airlines flight 93 that crashed in Shanksville, Pennsylvania did have time to think and they chose The Remembered Self’s world. They were willing to risk their lives right on the spot in order to save their fellow passengers and those that would be killed if the terrorists made it to their target. There were no pilots among the heroes of flight 93 so they must have had a strong sense of the fate that awaited them. They embraced that fate despite everything science taught them about cause and effect, rational thinking, and the universe as machine. That part of all of us that is never fooled took over for the passengers of United Airlines flight 93. It took over for all of those that gave their lives to save others. There is nothing in us that science can identify that makes heroes out of ordinary people, unless, of course, there are no ordinary people and we are all heroes. If such is the case that we are, as Nelson Mandela says, powerful beyond measure, then let’s explore the role of the victims in this drama.

Heroes by Chance
There are hundreds of stories that came out of the events of 911 that tell of delays, odd mishaps, chance encounters that kept people away who ordinarily would have been in the World Trade Center that fateful day. It never occurs to us in The Forgotten Self’s world that those events were created not by chance, but by choice. If, as Seth tells us, no one can create a choice for us then those people who were saved from tragedy because an alarm clock didn’t wake them up in time to go to work chose not to be at the World Trade Center that day. There are no accidents.

If you believe there are no accidents you are beginning to move into The Remembered Self’s world. If you are to plant both feet in this new world then you must transfer the power from the “cosmos,” or God, or whomever you ascribe the power to and give it back to yourself. You become the creator of your own “accidents,” and heroes-by-chance, those we call victims in The Forgotten Self’s world, become heroes-by-choice. Why would anyone choose to die like that? The Forgotten Self’s world provides no answer. It does make sense, however, in a world that is a unified whole, where each aspect of the whole is aware of the actions of every other aspect and where no action is ever undertaken without the whole’s agreement.

We think our feelings are in response to the actual event, but if, as Seth and Elias stipulate, the event is a response to our feelings then we better take a good look at those feelings. Seth says this:

Your world and everything in it exists first in the imagination, then. You have been taught to focus all of your attention upon physical events, so that they carry the authenticity of reality for you. Thoughts, feelings, or beliefs appear to be secondary, subjective – or somehow not real – and they seem to rise in response to an already established field of physical data . . .
You are, of course, literally hypnotized into believing that your feelings arise in response to events. Your feelings, however, cause the events you perceive. Secondarily, you do of course then react to those events.

This being the case then all “victims” become heroic participants in the disaster. They have chosen to leave this particular physical focus in such a way as to give us the most dramatic picture possible of our feelings and emotions. The manner in which they left this world was chosen by them for them. To believe otherwise is to say they have no power of choice in the manner in which they leave this world. Who they essentially are is as alive now as before 7:46 a.m. on September 11, 2001. They are as alive as the soldiers in a war movie after the battle scene is shot. But, there is responsibility beyond the mere experience of one’s life, and in this very big sense life is more than just experience. For, in the essence of who we are, there is no evil, there are no villains. The heroes of 911, at the level of their true essence, knew that at the exact moment of their death. They did not sacrifice their physical focus to teach us to hate more, but to love more.

Our feelings of meaninglessness and fear had grown so strong that only such a catastrophe could symbolically represent them. Three thousand people died, not as victims of a fanatical idea, but as willing ( but not through conscious awareness) heroes to move the race forward. They knew, as did our own deepest self, that a shock was needed to punch a hole in the manner in which we think about ourselves. How many of us questioned, or even railed against God after September 11? How many of us had our faith shaken to the core? September 11 was not created as a test of faith any more than AIDS was created to punish lasciviousness. September 11 was created as a call to a wider view of reality that could make sense out of such an apocalypse. Who we are is so large, and so vast that only such a symbolic act as 911 would be sufficient to knock us out of our belief in our insignificance and powerlessness.

The Terrorists
If you want to change the world for the better, then you are an idealist. If you want to change the world for the better, but you believe it cannot be changed one whit, then you are a pessimist, and your idealism will only haunt you. If you want to change the world for the better, but you believe it will grow worse, despite everyone’s efforts, then you are a truly despondent, perhaps misguided idealist. If you want to change the world for the better, and if you are determined to do so, no matter at what cost to yourself or others, no matter what the risk, and if you believe that those ends justify any means at your disposal, then you are a fanatic.

Fanatics are inverted idealists. Usually they are vague grandiose dreamers, whose plans almost completely ignore the full dimensions of normal living. They are unfulfilled idealists who are not content to express idealism in steps, one at a time, or indeed to wait for the practical workings of active expression. They demand immediate action. They want to make the world over in their own images. They cannot bear the expression of tolerance or opposing ideas. They are the most self-righteous of the self-righteous, and they will sacrifice almost anything – their own lives or the lives of others. They will justify almost any crime for the pursuit of those ends.
(Jane Roberts for Seth in “The Individual and the Nature of Mass Events”)

There is nothing wrong with wanting to change the world for the better. In fact, Seth tells us that changing the world for the better is our mission in life. In terms of value fulfillment this means that we do no harm to others in the process of making our own lives better. The word “better,” however, is as relative as Einstein’s time, and presupposes a “worse.” With that in mind I think most sensible people in the West would agree that the terrorists are fanatics based on Seth’s description above. But, you may remember that Seth also said that the taking of any life, other than for food, is a violation. Remember, also, that all life is a unified whole. There is no separation. To take any life in the pursuit of an ideal, then, makes the idealist a fanatic. In The Forgotten Self’s world the terrorists are fanatics and we are not.

What the terrorists nor we realize is that even though we believe in The Forgotten Self’s world, we live in a Remembered Self’s creation. What that means is this: All individual action toward an ideal will have an effect. No individual is powerless and therefore, in making yourself better, you make the world better. We believe that the individual, especially in the face of such apparently staggering odds, is powerless to change anything. And so, we don’t even bother to change ourselves, let alone the world. It is the fanatics’ belief in their individual powerlessness that propels them to such acts of destruction. Seth tells us: “When you fulfill your own abilities, when you express your personal idealism through acting it out to the best of your ability in your daily life, then you are changing the world for the better.”

It never occurs to any of us that the heroes of 911 were really victims of their own and our beliefs. It never occurs to us because we believe matter creates consciousness. If we begin to move into The Remembered Slef’s world where consciousness is a’ priori to matter then the events of 911 will begin to take on a whole new light. And, lest you think the terrorists are the only fanatics, consider this. Any time any life is taken for the sake of an ideal then the taker of that life is a fanatic. Even if the taking of that life is in defense of an ideal already in place, the taker of the life is a fanatic. This includes individuals, groups and nations. Seth suggests an expansion of a commandment present in most religions of the world. He suggests expanding “Thou Shalt not Kill,” to “Thou Shalt not Kill Even in the Pursuit of your Ideals.”

Killing has become so commonplace in The Forgotten Self’s world that even our priests give their blessings to killing for the sake of an ideal. It is called War, and whether it is defensive or offensive matters not a whit. It is a violation and it is fanaticism. Here is another example of fanaticism. The ideal involved is the saving of human life, a noble ideal by any standard. Medical science, seeing all life as separate and human life as paramount, has sacrificed millions of animals over the years in the pursuit of this ideal. If we cannot hold all life as sacred then we cannot fully embrace human life as sacred. If we cannot treat ourselves as sacred we cannot treat any life as sacred.

When one of the central beliefs of our time is that we are all separate beings and separate from God; When one of the central beliefs of our time is that we are the result of billions of years of evolution, a chance happenstance; when one of the central beliefs of our time is that “we are good and they are evil,” it is no big leap to take a life, whether it be human or animal. When one life in The Forgotten Self’s world is more precious than another, then the “collateral damage” of a smart bomb won’t even interrupt digestion. But, when in The Remembered Self’s world each life is as precious as all life combined, then the “collateral damage” or “any damage”of a smart bomb wounds us all and you feel it in the pit of your stomach.

Terrorists and fanatics will always exist in The Forgotten Self’s world, and judging from our response to 911 we have begun to create more of the same. What are the core beliefs involved? Evil exists in the world. We are vulnerable. Fear. We are victims. We must protect ourselves. Preserve the ideal at all costs. History has shown that these beliefs perpetuate the evidence that makes the belief necessary. Put another way, if we continue to believe the things we believe, nothing will change. Strike – counter strike. Strike – counter strike. You hit me – I hit you. You hit me – I hit you. I blow-up your home – you blow-up mine. I blow-up your home – you blow-up mine. I destroy your city – you destroy mine. You kill me – my bother kills you. Your brother kills my brother – my brother’s sister kills your sister. And when you repeat it out loud, just as I wrote it, doesn’t it sound just a little ridiculous? With psychology like this the meek just might inherit the earth.

I have chosen to honor all those who sacrificed their lives on September 11, 2001 by finally looking at them through the eyes of The Remembered Self, whose eyes are also my eyes. The heroes of 911 have precipitated a change, but have, as always, left the choice of how we view that change up to us. We can remain angry and frightened beings, separate from each other and from God, or we can finally acknowledge that part of us that is never fooled and step fearlessly into The Remembered Self’s world. The choice has always been ours to make.
Bill Marshall

Where Did All The Maple Trees GO?

I just want to let you know that I found the Me of Then.
I wrote this nearly three years ago as a song for a friend.
I believe we can all find the Me of Then.

Where Did The Maple Tree Go
by

Bill Marshall 8/26/03



There was a time when my years were few
That impossible things was something to do.

Long ago when I was young and free
I’d climb my way up the Maple tree.

The woods held magic and stories untold,
And fear was reserved for the graying old.

Yes, fear was reserved for the graying old,
Yes, fear was reserved for the graying old.


There was a time ‘fore I learned the rules,
When caves were hideouts and pennies were jewels.

I jumped from roofs in a superman cape
And swam wide rivers and deep blue lakes.

The woods held magic and stories untold,
And fear was reserved for the graying old.

Yes, fear was reserved for the graying old.
Yes, fear was reserved for the graying old.


Then came the time when I started to learn
That life was a struggle, on a dime it could turn.

I could run so fast and nothing more,
That to be protected I must lock my door.

The trees I avoided, the woods I did scorn.
My parents did tell me, my parents did warn.

Yes, my parents did tell me, my parents did warn.
Yes, my parents did tell me, my parents did warn.


I became a victim, a pawn of life,
A windblown feather in a world of strife.

I forgot the magic of the trees and the woods,
And put my chips on “Thou Shalts,” and “You Shoulds.”

The trees I avoided the woods I did scorn.
The world did tell me, the world did warn.

Yes, the world did tell me, the world did warn.
Yes, the world did tell me, the world did warn.


So now I am graying and filled with fear,
Life’s hapless victim and void of cheer.

But now and then I remember the ME
That romped to the top of the Maple tree.

I forgot the power of a kid’s “What If”
The joy of sailing on a makeshift skiff.

Yes, I forgot the power of a kid’s “What If”
The joy of sailing on a makeshift skiff.


So where did they go those wonders of me
That had me climbing the tallest tree.

What made me scared to take a chance,
To move my feet in freedom’s dance.

Someone once said that to be as this child
Would turn the world to an Emerald Isle.

Yes, would turn this world to an Emerald Isle.
Yes, would turn this world to an Emerald Isle.

I’ll go on back to the me of then.
I’ll slide on down to the magic of when.

I’ll tread on back to before I learned
That life is a struggle, on a dime it can turn.

I’ll live the rest of my life in this realm,
With me as the driver, with me at the helm.

Yes, with me as the driver, with me at the helm.
Yes, with me as the driver, with me at the helm.
Oh, with me as the driver, with me at the helm.
Oh, with me as the driver, with me at the helm.

Old Age

I see several people in my office every week who are only in their fourth decade that tell me they are old and that all of their physical dilemmas are due to age. They are well on their way to meeting their expectations.

In a culture that glorifies youth it is no wonder that our elderly are unable to see their value, or that there is any purpose to growing older. We have forgotten that there is an art to growing old. We have forgotten that the tree bears fruit at the end of its season. Jung reminds us in Structure and Dynamics of the Psyche that we would not grow old if growing old had no meaning. Our early years entrenches us in the objective world. We take on the beliefs of our parents, friends and culture and learn them as truths. They become invisible in their ability to make us tick. As young people we respond often without thought. We react automatically and this carries on to old age.

As a culture we glorify youth and in so doing we denigrate all that comes after. We scoff at an eighty-year old on a skateboard and snicker at a seventy-year old woman trying to look thirty. These are all beliefs that we never examine and so we continue with our automatic responses and therefore meet our beliefs head-on. We are unaware of our own truths.

We are taught from our earliest days and believe completely by young adulthood that after a certain time, usually age twenty-five, our bodies, senses, and mind will meet with a steady decline. To believe this is to set ourselves up to meet those very conditions we expect to occur. Don't misunderstand me. I am not saying we will not grow old and die. I am saying that the suffering that we now meet in old age can be dramatically reduced by understanding that our beliefs about old age are not truths, but are experienced as truths.

Some of our old people never bought into our cultural stereotype of ageing. In them you can see Jung’s wise old man and the crone. They always understood that the fruit was most ripe and delicious just before it dropped from the tree. Despite being brow beaten they knew that each season has its own purpose and carries its own treasures. We can say it is genetics and good living, but how can genetics and good living account for their lack of complaint? How can genetics and good living account for the look in their eyes that tells us they know something we don't? How do we grow more wise old men and more crones? We start at the beginning with our children. We begin through example so that by the time death comes we greet it without feeding tubes, respirators and life support machines.

Consciousness does not experience death as a failure, whether it comes early or late, by expectation or not. Consciousness is eternal and, as such, unexpected or early death is seen as another experience that only went so far. Those that are left behind do not see it that way because of our beliefs, but for those that die, the realization eventually occurs. Death is not an end, but simply a new beginning, and it always has its purpose.

Death merely marks a new beginning. GC Jung in The Structure and Dynamics of the Psyche says:

“We are so convinced that death is simply the end of a process that it does not ordinarily occur to us to conceive of death as a goal and a fulfilment, as we do without hesitation the aims and purposes of youthful life in its ascendance.”

Death is as much a goal and a fulfilment as is birth.
Bill Marshall

To Wave or Not to Wave: That Is The Quantum

The entirety of this blog, 21st Century Reality, is dedicated to making the point that reality is much more than we suspect it to be and that the outer world of stones, gasses, smells, buildings and all that we behold externally is an outer abstract projection - as in a dream - of an inner subjective state. It’s not that far fetched if one is familiar with quantum physics.

How many of us, in our hectic lifestyles, have wished we could be in two places at once? If you were an electron not only could you be at two places at the same time, you could also be two different things at the same time. This should certainly drill at least an electron-size hole in the box of our beliefs; beliefs that say all of who we are is the person staring back at us in the mirror, and that there is a THE REALITY we all perceive differently. In a classic experiment electrons are fired from an electron gun at a screen with two slits in it. The electrons leave the gun at the same time as particles, but by the time they reach the slits they have turned into waves. Not only that, but each electron goes through both slits at the same time. The complementarity principal says that electrons can be both waves and particles at the same time. Are we willing to believe that anything can be two things at one time? Doesn’t this counter what we believe to be the nature of reality? Believe it or not, electrons exist as probabilities until they are observed and all of our choices exist as probablities until we actualize them.

I Observe Therefore It Is

An electron, or any subatomic particle for that matter, can literally be anywhere until we pay attention to it. If we pay it no mind, it goes where it wants to go, or rather remains as a probability wave. It is at the moment of observation that a wave decides to become a particle and also decides to be in a particular place. The observation creates the reality. Our attention is critical to what we create in our lives.

This poses interesting philosophical questions, especially since our universe and everything in it is made of these little subatomic things. Do you only ‘pop’ into existence for me when I look at you? Is the moon a materialization of a mass focus of humanity or does each of us create our own moon? Do our senses perceive what is ‘out there’ or do they create the ‘out there’ out of a conscious universe that is all energy? Are we like the legendary King Midas, who was cursed to never be able to caress the skin of his beloved without turning her to gold? Does everything we touch turn to matter? The quantum world is our evidence to ourselves that reality and our part in it is far grander than our most fanciful imaginings.
Bill Marshall

Health: Can You Spare Me A Glass Of Water

“If we are talking about health, it is to your beliefs that we must look. You have the most efficient and beautiful physical organs, the most elegant joints and appendages, the most vibrant lungs and the most exquisite of senses. It is up to you to form a body of beliefs that is worthy of your physical image -- for you are nourished by your beliefs, and those beliefs can cause your daily bread to add to your vitality, or to add to your tears and stress.”
(Seth/Jane Roberts: The Way Toward Health)

Health is a touchy subject; so let me get the legal disclaimers out of the way. Be careful, coffee is hot. No, wait! I think McDonald's was advised to use that one. My disclaimer is this. Do not stop seeing your doctor and do not stop taking your medications! There, I said it and printed it in bold letters. To discover a deep-seeded basic belief is about as easy as removing a splinter from the centre of your back all by yourself. What we believe about our health is what sets up the conditions of health or illness. The belief comes first and then the conditions that our doctors find when they go looking. We are the victims of our beliefs, not of disease. The disease is the objective manifestation of the projection of our perception, which is directed by our beliefs. The disease comes to communicate, not attack.

This headline appeared in my local newspaper on January 8, 2002. Americans spent $1.3 trillion on healthcare in 2000. In 2003 it grew to $1.7 trillion. That’s a lot of energy, which is the result of powerful beliefs. The report went on to say that health care spending averaged $4,637 per person, up from $4,377 in 1999. In 2003 it rose to $5,670 per person. Health care now represents 13.5% of America’s gross domestic product and is outpacing inflation by several points. American spending on prescription drugs has increased at a double-digit rate every year since 1994, and has now become a hot political issue.

Seth tells us, “Each individual is a good person, an individualized portion of universal energy itself. Each person is meant to express his or her own characteristics and abilities. Life means energy, power, and expression. Those beliefs, if taught early enough, would form the most definitive system of preventative medicine ever known.”

I am a two needle a day news junkie. I get the light news in the a.m. and the heavy-duty stuff in the p.m. A few years ago Dan Rather of CBS Evening News introduced a short piece about how scientists had made a connection between male pattern baldness and heart disease. I thought to myself, “My God, they have just killed an untold number of bald men.” Why were they killed? For the same reason voodoo works its magic on those that believe in it. There are enough men who believe so strongly in the power of science that such a news piece acts strongly through the power of suggestion.

Seth and Elias tell us that what we believe about the food we eat is more important than the food itself. He maintains the body is able to assimilate a vast array of foodstuffs. Science is turning much of what we eat into toxins. Who doesn’t feel guilty when downing a hefty slice of banana cream pie? We can visualize it making its way to our hips and the inside walls of our arteries in the form of cholesterol. Recently the evening news reported that scientists have discovered harmful effects of milk!

Here's a brief example of how absurd some of the information we are being taught to believe can be. We are told that to foster good health we should consume several 8 oz. glasses of water per day. Water used to be free, but now a one billion dollar industry has risen from our fear of drinking tap water and our belief that we need to drink so much of it. It’s rare to see someone without a clear plastic bottle of water in his or her hand or strapped to his or her hip. Soon we will all be trailing port-o-lets behind our vehicles like in that drug commercial for people with frequent urination problems. It’s a wonder we don’t all have frequent urination problems with all the water we are told we need to drink. If you align with the belief then the belief will be expressed in your reality, but when you realize it is a belief and not a cosmic truth then your choices open up. Aligning with the belief makes it your truth.

Our need for that much water does not make sense. What about all those hundreds of millions of people who live in arid parts of the world and seem to do quite nicely on a significantly smaller ration of the wet stuff? Here's my bet: I bet a quart of Perrier that if we were to convince those hundreds of millions of people that to be healthy they must consume several 8 oz. glasses of water a day, within one year half of them would be sick from chronic dehydration and the other half would start looking like prunes. It’s all in the belief.

Our bodies are magnificently constructed in such a way that it will respond to whatever we believe about it. The body has its own consciousness, but is exquisitely sensitive to our own subjective states. The evidence, however, seems to indicate just the opposite. The evidence of one of the central ideas of our time, that of scientific method, tells us that we are vulnerable to a Pandora's Box worth of invaders. We must be forever vigilant, lest some nasty microbe establishes a beachhead, or one of our healthy cells decides to mutate and turn against us. When we believe that consciousness is a by-product of matter it is a small leap of faith to believe we are vulnerable to just about everything. And since we create what we believe, the evidence that confirms our beliefs will appear in abundance. Through ‘free will' we believe in our vulnerability and so we are vulnerable.
I realize I’m treading on sacred ground here, but our belief in our body’s inability to stay healthy has gotten so extreme that some women are sacrificing their breasts before any evidence of cancer appears, based solely upon a strong family history of breast cancer. Beliefs that deeply seeded are what required my legal disclaimer. Our physicians, as well-intentioned as they are, scoff at the practices of voodoo witch doctors and yet routinely ask us to sacrifice our breasts, reproductive organs, prostate glands, legs, thyroid's, hearts, lungs. Our response to this is that we would die if they were not removed, and we are right. We would die, but is it always by choice, a point I’ll get into later.
Bill Marshall