Tuesday, February 17, 2004 (Private/Phone)

Participants: Mary (Michael) and Frank (Ulra)

(Elias’ arrival time is 11 seconds.)

ELIAS: Good morning!

FRANK: Good morning! Good to talk to you again. (Elias chuckles) I look forward to these chats.

ELIAS: Ha ha! And what shall we be discussing?

FRANK: I’ve got all sorts of things, actually a lot of dreams to talk about today.

ELIAS: Ah.

FRANK: But before we get into that, I wanted to ask you a question that I thought about right after our last conversation. You may recall that I had a dream that we discussed then that was really a viewing of a focus that I had during the beginning of World War II, in the Philippines.

My question on that — and this occurred to me later — is that in this focus I’ve always felt sort of a very negative attitude towards General MacArthur. It’s always been my impression that he is viewed as this great military mind and military hero, but in fact he really wasn’t all that spectacular and a lot of the things that he did were really sort of big mistakes. In fact, one of the things that I always thought about was the fact that during the initial attacks by the Japanese, they were totally unprepared in the Philippines, particularly on the air bases there, which seems to be exactly what I viewed. So my question is, is the attitude I have in this focus about all that the result of that focus I viewed in the dream?

ELIAS: It is quite influencing, yes.

FRANK: Then the next question is — because I’ve been sort of trying to get a little sense of this, but I haven’t — did the person in that focus live through that or did he die?

ELIAS: The individual was wounded, in your terms, and continued within physical focus for a time but eventually did die.

FRANK: Like within a year or two?

ELIAS: Yes, and that individual did not incorporate what you would term to be a very high opinion of the General, either. (Both laugh)

FRANK: It was just very interesting to me because I always felt like my view of that was based on a reading of history and all that sort of thing, but then I realized that maybe it was more based on that. (Elias chuckles) It is sort of a different view than is the norm with regard to General MacArthur.

ELIAS: I am understanding, and that focus is influencing of your assessment now.

FRANK: That’s pretty interesting. Now let’s move on to some dreams here, because there are probably about four of them that I recall, maybe more.

The first one I wanted to ask you about is this — and some of these are pretty vague at this point because it’s been a while since they occurred. In this dream, I was at my home, but in the dream it’s not the current home that I’m in; it was a place I viewed as home. I looked out in the backyard and there was a giant hole in the backyard. It was dug by workmen; it was sort of a perfect square hole, and I could see a sewer pipe in there. Then the next thing I remember was there were trees falling all over the place, and I looked down and the pipe was broken. Then some other things occurred which I don’t recall, but then when I looked out later the hole was all filled in.

ELIAS: And your impression?

FRANK: About the only thing that I can come up with here is that it is somewhat reminiscent of the dream I had about a year and a half ago, where I looked out in my backyard and there were trees falling all over and it was like a big storm, and somebody was trying to crawl into the house and I was helping them. At that point, you said that it had to do with somebody going into transition, which actually ended up not occurring. I don’t think this is that, but that’s the only analogy I can think of.

ELIAS: Now; in this, allow yourself to incorporate the dream imagery and assess how the dream imagery parallels your waking imagery.

FRANK: Well, the hole in the backyard I would say means something is uncovered which is normally below the surface, something that I maybe wouldn’t normally be aware of. It seems that the broken pipe clearly signifies something is not working the way it should or the way I want it to. I don’t know. The trees falling, I’m not quite sure what to make of that — maybe outside events or what appear to me to be outside events, influencing things. The hole filled in would be it’s back below the surface, right? How’s that?

ELIAS: I may express to you that that would be an adequate psychological evaluation! (Both laugh)

FRANK: Okay, so now tell me, what does it mean?

ELIAS: (Laughs) I may express to you that the hole is significant of your assessment of below the surface and an exposure or an opening. In that opening, there is discovered different elements within yourself that you may have been previously unaware of objectively, but not necessarily that it is an element of yourself that is broken. This is merely a symbol that you are incorporating to emphasize to yourself certain restrictions that you have previously incorporated with yourself that you have uncovered and have allowed yourself to recognize and therefore move beyond.

The trees are symbolizations of different structures within your focus that you have also dismantled, so to speak, therefore removing obstacles from your movement. In returning the earth to its original state, so to speak, or filling the hole, you are generating a symbolization to yourself of, in a manner of speaking not a pun necessarily, but becoming whole. (Both laugh)

FRANK: That’s good! In terms of the restrictions within myself that I uncovered, can you tell me what those were?

ELIAS: This is in relation to discussions that we have incorporated previously and your recognition of certain beliefs that have restricted you previously in association with family, friends and most significantly with your business, in association with struggle and not generating the ease in what you are creating, recognizing that many different expressions that you valued included that element of struggle. In uncovering those beliefs, you have allowed yourself to address to those beliefs and not necessarily eliminate them, but allowed yourself to incorporate more choices, which has generated significant changes within your reality.

FRANK: Boy, that’s for sure! (Elias chuckles) We’ll talk about that later.

ELIAS: Ha ha! Very well!

FRANK: But yeah, that certainly has. Now I’m just wondering if I should have figured that out on my own.

ELIAS: (Laughs) Let me express to you, my friend, the reason that you incorporate discussions with myself in this manner is to offer yourself more information concerning how to be responding to yourself and how to be evaluating what communications you are offering to yourself and different avenues in which you may be translating the imagery that you offer to yourself. In this, you are merely allowing yourself to recognize clues and in what direction you may be evaluating different imageries and how they correlate to each other. The point is that eventually you shall offer yourself your answers concerning your imagery.

FRANK: But in the meantime it gives me something to talk to you about. I don’t want to put you out of a job!

ELIAS: (Laughs) And it also offers you the opportunity to engage conversation with a friend.

FRANK: Good. Well, let’s move on to the next one. In this next dream, I was with a friend of mine who worked for the company that I worked for and... (Sound cuts out; long pause)

ELIAS: One moment. I shall be interrupting of you temporarily, for there is an interference in the equipment and it is affecting of the recording.

(Mary comes back, corrects the problem, and Elias returns)

ELIAS: Continuing!

FRANK: Why don’t I start from the beginning here. I had this dream where I was with a friend of mine, a former colleague, and I had been given a job, which was actually sort of a job that I used to have in the past. I felt like I didn’t have enough experience to really do this job, so I sat down with this friend and he said, “No, you shouldn’t be in that job. This is over your head at this point.” So that was that.

ELIAS: And your impression?

FRANK: Clearly I must be telling myself that I don’t feel like I’m capable of doing something that I’m trying to do, but I’m sort of at a loss to determine what is it, what the subject of this is.

ELIAS: Not necessarily. This dream imagery is not necessarily associated with your capabilities, but it is imagery that you are presenting to yourself in association with what you want and what you do not want. In this, you are merely generating symbolizations in expressing to yourself in the dream imagery that you do not incorporate enough experience or the ability to successfully execute a particular task; but that is being presented in that manner merely to emphasize the significance of the want and to emphasize to you to pay attention.

In this, what you are actually generating is not that you do not incorporate the ability to generate certain actions and movements, but that in the ability to generate certain accomplishments, you are potentially incorporating an overwhelmingness with yourself. In a manner of speaking, the imagery of the dream may be viewed as the reverse of what you are creating objectively within your waking state. It is, in a manner of speaking, a type of mirror reflection of what you are generating objectively in waking state in creating successful movement, but in that successful movement to a point of overwhelmingness, which is what you do not want.

FRANK: And boy, like I said, we’re going to get to that a little later! That sure is exactly what’s going on. Well, that would have been a tough one to figure out. (Elias chuckles)

Here’s the next one. In this dream, I was babysitting for this new employee that I just hired. Actually I volunteered to baby-sit for his children. But pretty much right after I volunteered to do it and I had got in my car, I realized I didn’t want to do it, so I tried to get out of it. I’m not quite sure what else happened in the dream, but that’s what that one was.

ELIAS: And your impression?

FRANK: Again, I don’t know. This may be too simplistic, but I’m almost thinking it maybe had something to do with a volunteer task I recently took on to manage a baseball league, where it was kind of like do I want to do it or do I not want to do it. Even when I was in the midst of volunteering, I was questioning whether or not it was a good idea or if it would be something I really wanted to do. That’s my guess.

ELIAS: THAT is a correct assessment. That is a presentment once again to yourself of an opportunity to genuinely be paying attention to your own communications, and in listening to your communications that you express with yourself, to evaluate what choices you incorporate, which choices are more in association with your preference, which choices may be influenced by obligations or expectations or other motivations, and what is your communication to yourself concerning what you genuinely want. In a manner of speaking, you are offering yourself practice scenarios in which you offer to yourself the opportunity to genuinely be listening and paying attention to what YOU want.

Now; remember, any of these opportunities that you offer to yourself are not limited to one direction or one subject matter, so to speak, for it is significant that you allow yourself to incorporate viewing the big picture, so to speak, of all of your movement within your focus.

FRANK: I understand what you’re saying there. The one volunteer job is just one thing, but this is going on everywhere in my life. But that’s the one that’s sort of more obvious to me right now?

ELIAS: Yes.

FRANK: I think I did listen to myself in this. I had mixed feelings, but on balance I decided to do what I decided to do. Is that an accurate assessment or did I make a choice based on these other expectations and obligations and that sort of thing?

ELIAS: No, you ARE listening to yourself. What I am expressing to you is what we may view as the theme of this particular conversation and interaction that we are incorporating this morning, which concerns overwhelming yourself, how that is being incorporated and influencing many of your choices and your directions in this time framework.

You choose to be incorporating that action in the volunteering, but allow yourself to also recognize how this incorporation of overwhelmingness spills into many different areas and influences how you perceive many different actions, even those that may be viewed as fun.

FRANK: I understand that, too; right. Let’s go on with a few more, and then before we terminate today I’d like to just talk about this whole subject of being overwhelmed and why I’m doing it and where to go with it and all that sort of thing.

ELIAS: (Chuckles) Very well.

FRANK: I have a couple more here. I don’t know why I remembered so many dreams this time around. (Elias chuckles)

In this next one, I was playing baseball. I was pitching to a batter, but we were inside of a building. It was almost like a theatre, like a room with a whole bunch of chairs stacked up like people would maybe watch a speaker or something. These people were in front of me, and I was throwing the baseball through a door to this guy. The first three pitches I threw were balls; I missed with them. The next two were strikes: one he hit real hard and the other one I completely fooled the guy. That was that dream. (Pause)

ELIAS: And your impression?

FRANK: Oh man, I don’t know. Well, I was doing something inside that you would normally do outside, and there were a lot of people watching. About the only other thing I can pull out of it is that it started out with failure and then it turned into success.

ELIAS: (Chuckles) Let me express to you, this game of baseball that you incorporate a preference with and that you genuinely enjoy and offer yourself an avenue of fun with is also quite intertwined with other actions that you incorporate and that are important to you. Therefore, with this game you may view that you symbolize many different expressions in the actions associated with the game.

This dream imagery is actually concerning your business and incorporating actions in association with how you interact with other individuals associated with your business. In the game, you incorporate strategies and different movements but also you incorporate an action of being a unit, a team. You incorporate many similarities within your business. This dream imagery concerns your own creativity in your strategies and the allowance of yourself to be expressing your own strength in your creativity, and in your strategies to generate the success that you want, also incorporating that action in a manner in which it may be viewed as a game, that your successfulness is expressed much more freely if you are incorporating your actions as fun rather than work.

FRANK: That sounds great! (Elias chuckles) That’s what you always tell me to do, right?

ELIAS: (Laughs) You are correct!

FRANK: Why were all these people in the room? Why was it indoors and all these people were in there?

ELIAS: This is the symbolization that you are expressing in association with business, that there are many individuals that are incorporated — your imagery to yourself that in that forum there are many individuals that are watching and therefore it is significant that you are concentrating your attention upon yourself and therefore allowing yourself to be presenting an example.

FRANK: What about the part where I’m pitching to this guy and in the beginning I’m unsuccessful and then I become successful? I guess that’s pretty obvious; it’s just how things have gone over the last few years.

ELIAS: And that is imagery concerning your attention. In the beginning your attention is more focused upon the other individual. But as you continue, your attention moves to yourself and your own strategy and your own ability, and is concentrated more so upon what YOU are doing than upon what the other individual is doing.

FRANK: That’s interesting. I suppose that would apply to the objective team of baseball too, correct?

ELIAS: Yes.

FRANK: It will be interesting to see how that goes this year. I feel like it’s going to go really well.

Here’s the last one. This was just a couple of nights ago. In this dream I was sitting next to my son, and we were in a room with a group of people. The reason we were there was to take an aptitude test. There was a woman who was leading the test, and she gave us a small piece of paper. She read off a list of numbers, and we were supposed to circle each number on the paper. But the problem was that as she starts to read these numbers, I couldn’t read anything on the page even though everybody else seemed to be able to read it, and I think my son couldn’t read it, either. So that’s that one.

ELIAS: And your impression?

FRANK: Initially I thought it was some sense of inadequacy, but basically I didn’t feel that way when it happened.

ELIAS: No.

FRANK: I didn’t feel like I was not intelligent enough or smart enough to do it. It was more like this was a big confusion.

ELIAS: The imagery that you are presenting to yourself in this dream is much more associated with you and your son.

Now; the significance of the test, so to speak, is not actually a test. It is an evaluation of abilities and of self, so to speak.

Now; the significance of this dream imagery is that what you have offered to yourself in information is a type of clue concerning yourself and your son and the relationship that you generate between the two of you. In this, what you have presented is an offering of recognizing similarities and generating an understanding in those similarities. I may express to you, in association with your son you are expressing to yourself a communication to be paying attention to those similarities between yourself and your son. In that, you shall generate a clearer understanding of your son’s movements and offer yourself an avenue in which you may be more strongly supportive to him.

FRANK: As long as we’re on that subject, maybe you can talk about that a little bit. For example, which similarities are the key things for me to think about, and how can I be more strongly supportive?

ELIAS: This is the point, for you to pay attention to the expressions that he generates and to be noticing similarities of his expressions to different expressions or assessments within yourself. In a manner of speaking, it is a type of exercise for you to be genuinely paying attention and discovering what those similarities are, and therefore in recognizing the similarities generating a greater understanding within yourself. Therefore, you shall automatically be expressing more of a supportiveness.

FRANK: I do see some of those, although I probably tend to more notice the ones that are what I would view as negative, if you know what I mean by that.

ELIAS: Yes.

Now; in that, if you are noticing similarities that you view as negative, allow yourself to evaluate that. Allow yourself to evaluate how you process that information within yourself and how you turn your perception concerning yourself in association with any of these negative expressions or qualities.

FRANK: Actually, the instant those words just came out of my mouth it truly occurred to me that I don’t know that they’re really that negative, that they’re okay.

ELIAS: I am understanding.

FRANK: Negative is maybe the wrong word. Maybe it’s more of a thing — and I guess this is what it is — that I sort of feel like gee, if only he could sort of get to where I am he could create his life more the way he wants to; although overall, I don’t think he’s an unhappy person at all. I guess it’s a thing of seeing how there’s an easier way to go through all this and...

ELIAS: I am understanding, but the significance in this, my friend, is for you to be generating the understanding in recognizing those similarities.

As an example let me express to you, if you are hypothetically viewing actions and expressions within your son that appear to you to be a movement that is being expressed more difficultly than it is necessary, allow yourself to remember your own movement and that you have incorporated your struggling also.

FRANK: Right, and it took a long time.

ELIAS: And in that, in remembering your own challenges, you may generate a greater understanding of the frustration or the practicing with different abilities to reinforce your own trust of yourself, and incorporate an understanding of you have incorporated your own process also and at times it may have been somewhat of a challenge and a struggle also. Even in what you perceive to be success, there may continue to be challenges.

FRANK: Okay, I get it. All right, we’ll move on from that! (Elias laughs) That’s the end of the dreams, so there we go. But it’s taken up a lot of our time here and I have a variety of other things to sort of throw at you. Maybe we can kind of move through them quickly, and then I want to end up on this whole business about being overwhelmed. (Elias laughs)

A few days ago I got a call from my kids right after they got home from school saying there’s a squirrel in the house, so I wanted to ask you about that imagery. My impression, since I know you’ll ask me that, is two-fold. Number one, I think maybe it was what we discussed last time, more practice for me on not having an automatic response to it, and I also think it was there for my wife to sort of practice or get experience not over-reacting to things. (Elias chuckles) Is that an accurate assessment?

ELIAS: Yes, and also to generate in association with each other an element of excitement. (Both laugh)

FRANK: Really? It wasn’t that exciting! Maybe more for the kids. Actually, we viewed it as kind of fun, me and the kids. Interesting.

Lately I’ve started exercising again at a health club and all that sort of thing, and I’ve been lifting weights. In the past we’ve talked about how that led me to have injuries because I really didn’t really want to do it, but now I kind of feel like I do want to do it. Is that an accurate assessment? Am I heading down this road again where I’m going to hurt myself?

ELIAS: That is not a potential in this now. I may express to you, you are generating a different perception. Rather than incorporating this action as a type of work to be defying age, you are generating the action more associated with fun and pleasure. Therefore, the incorporation of how you express it is different.

FRANK: That’s what I thought. I just wanted to check on that.

I want to bring up two things and we can come to this whole business about being overwhelmed. As you know, mostly where I’m overwhelmed is at work, and it’s just been amazing what’s happened. New business is coming in faster than any of us can deal with it. It’s been great but it’s been hard also.

But with regard to that, I want to talk about that but I also want to talk about two other things. Number one, my partner as a result of all this has just gotten pretty crabby lately, which I understand; it happens every year at this time. That’s one element of this whole thing. The other part of it is that in the midst of all this, I am also sort of working on a really, really big deal that would significantly increase our revenue even more — not necessarily the workload, but the revenue would go up quite a bit. I’m not even sure what I’m asking you here, but if you could comment on that and this whole business about being overwhelmed and how I can deal with that.

ELIAS: (Chuckles) This also would be associated with remembering what you are generating and remembering what you want. In this, you may be less overwhelmed if you are not pushing your energy.

Now; remember, you and I have discussed this pushing of your energy several times previously. That is a type of familiar action that generates automatic responses, and it is what we may term to be an easy direction to slip into, for it is very familiar. That is associated with your belief concerning struggle. As I have expressed to you in this conversation, you have not eliminated that belief, which is the point, but you have allowed yourself to incorporate choices that generate different expressions associated with that belief.

Now; in this, it is significant that you allow yourself to pay attention to what you are doing and what type of energy you are expressing in any time framework, and to notice the time frameworks in which you are pushing your energy which generates this overwhelmingness. For you begin to perceive that you do not incorporate enough time to accomplish all that you must be accomplishing, and that there is too much to be done, so to speak.

Now; in time frameworks in which you are not pushing your energy, you allow yourself to focus much more clearly. You are not as easily distracted, and therefore your perception of time is quite different. You do incorporate ample time to be accomplishing all that you want to be accomplishing.

Let me express to you, the overwhelmingness is not merely associated with your business. It is the catalyst, for that is the initial direction in which you are pushing. But it also is influencing of all of your other directions — in association with your family, with your time frameworks in which you incorporate your games and your expressions of fun. They also shall be less fun if you are continuing to push your energy in association with the business, for it is affecting of your perception in every direction, not merely in the direction of the business.

You may be incorporating your successfulness and be reminding yourself of your own playfulness and not be generating the work that you do not want to be engaging. I am not expressing physical work, for I am aware that that aspect of the business, so to speak, is not a concern to you. I am speaking of the work that you are generating with your energy. Whereas, previously you moved into an allowance of yourself to be generating an ease with your energy and creating your successfulness but not overwhelming yourself, now you are generating more successfulness but you are slipping into that expression of pushing with your energy. In that, you generate a tension again, and that tension is quite influencing in this expression of overwhelmingness.

FRANK: Does that all come back to the belief in struggle, that in the past I was struggling to be successful and now that I’m more successful I’ve got to create struggle somewhere else?

ELIAS: Struggling to continue with the success and struggling to generate the success in volume. But now that you have accomplished what you want in your successfulness, you shall struggle with the successfulness itself. (Chuckles)

FRANK: It’s better this way than the old way (Elias laughs), but you’ve pointed out another path here.

ELIAS: Yes. Remember your dream and allow yourself to incorporate the energy with your business as you do with the game. Allow yourself a playfulness. You may be challenging yourself in a manner to allow yourself to express more of your abilities and more of your creativity, which is not necessarily striving but generating greater exploration, which is what you do in your game. You challenge yourself to be expressing more of your abilities and your creativity as you play the game; in your business, you may be generating a very similar type of energy, which generates the continued increase in what you term to be success and satisfaction but accomplishing that in a manner of playfulness rather than struggling and pushing your energy.

FRANK: I will think about that one. It hasn’t felt like I was pushing, but obviously maybe I’m just not in touch with what I’m doing here. It’s almost felt like I’ve been too overwhelmed to be pushing, because rather than me trying to create things, things are coming at me.

ELIAS: I am not expressing pushing in association with what you are generating. I am expressing an identification of pushing yourself, and that is what is creating the overwhelmingness.

FRANK: Oh, okay. Well, I’d prefer not to do that...

(Tape ends after 58 minutes.)

©2007 Mary Ennis, All Rights Reserved

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Copyright 2004 Mary Ennis, All Rights Reserved.