Changing Others’ Energy by Changing How You Receive
Topics:
“The Power of Acknowledgement”
“Changing Others’ Energy by Changing How You Receive”
“Feeling and Thinking Are Not Indicators of Energy”
“Being Present Can Change Previous Energy”
Sunday, January 14, 2007 (Private/Phone)
Participants: Mary (Michael) and Alicia (Tisara)
ELIAS: Good afternoon!
ALICIA: Hello! Elias!
ELIAS: Ha ha! And what shall we discuss?
ALICIA: Well, as usual I feel like I could discuss a million different things. I’m not sure if that means that my energy is scattered, but I sort of have a plan here. I want to first start out and just ask you some focus hunting impressions feedback.
ELIAS: Very well.
ALICIA: All right. And then I want to talk about my children. I think that after two years I’m ready to talk about them.
ELIAS: Very well.
ALICIA: So, a while ago you said that I had a focus as a Hemingway family member, so the impression I got was that I was a sister?
ELIAS: Correct.
ALICIA: And I was thinking Ursula?
ELIAS: Correct.
ALICIA: All right. Salem witch trial: you also said I was one of the afflicted girls, so I was thinking the person I had, her name was Elizabeth?
ELIAS: Yes.
ALICIA: Parent?
ELIAS: Yes.
ALICIA: And the comrade of Atilla the Hun, you said that I was and that I held more of a central position? I was thinking his vizier, his name begins with an ‘O’, and I cannot pronounce it.
ELIAS: Yes, you are correct.
ALICIA: All right! And I also said four famous writing focuses. Actually, this one comes from Baruch. He said that his impression was that I was Selma Lagerlof?
ELIAS: Yes.
ALICIA: Yes, okay. My impression was that I was - for some reason I keep thinking of a satirical French connected with Molière, but not with Molière, but somehow I’m making that connection. Do I have a French writing focus?
ELIAS: Yes.
ALICIA: During the time of Molière?
ELIAS: Yes.
ALICIA: Or just sort of satirical like Molière, or neither?
ELIAS: Both.
ALICIA: Both? But famous to everybody, or just to the French people?
ELIAS: More to that culture.
ALICIA: Okay, so I wouldn’t necessarily find the person on the internet?
ELIAS: You might.
ALICIA: Okay. All right, I have an Asian writing focus from ancient Japan?
ELIAS: Yes.
ALICIA: And I was also thinking that in my American famous writing focus I was a male from the 1800s who tends to be more philosophical and non-fiction writing?
ELIAS: Correct.
ALICIA: I was thinking Henry Adams?
ELIAS: Yes.
ALICIA: Okay. Does Awan have a focus that she shares with me of my Atlantean focus that you had told me a while ago was into the study of crystals?
ELIAS: Yes.
ALICIA: And that we worked together?
ELIAS: Correct.
ALICIA: And a long time ago you said that you and I shared some focuses where I was - I can’t remember the words you used, not friends - but we were in conflict, and I can’t remember how many you said, but it made me wonder if one of those involved your Oscar Wilde focus? And I got a sense that I was one of the lawyers prosecuting Oscar Wilde?
ELIAS: Yes.
ALICIA: (Long pause) Are you there?
ELIAS: Yes.
ALICIA: So…
ELIAS: That would be correct.
ALICIA: Cavalry man who was involved in Chief Gall, luring him? I think was he ambushed or something?
ELIAS: Correct.
ALICIA: And then I was meditating recently, and this sentence fragment came up, and I’m wondering if it was connected to a focus. The sentence fragment that came up was “small house in Texas.”
ELIAS: Yes.
ALICIA: Is that a current focus?
ELIAS: Past.
ALICIA: Past. Okay.
I wrote something having to do with my children, and I want to read you just a sentence fragment of it, more than a sentence fragment (inaudible). I’m not going to read the whole thing but it sort of gives you an idea of where I’ve been and some of my questions following.
I wrote: “In session 1503, I found a quote from Elias that help me to make sense of a recent experience. The quote is: ‘All that is required is a moment in which you allow yourself to move your attention to an unfamiliar expression and to incorporate an openness and a willingness to experiment. In this, it is not required to be incorporating tremendous process or methods. That occurs in merely allowing yourself to explore or experiment momentarily with any type of unfamiliar action, for that generates a different understanding.’”
And then I write: “My experience - and it had to do with my children - over my two-week holiday break, I begin to notice that my energy felt lighter and more joyful while I was at work than when I found myself at home. This noticing made me realize that I was experiencing more of a preference for being at work. I thought to myself, ‘Yikes! How can this be? I love my children more than anything.’ However, I also experience my children to be a huge challenge currently.” I’ll skip that part because I don’t need to undoubtedly know. “I have briefly talked to Elias about this, and of course his input was having me practice leaving them alone to learn experientially about self-responsibility and for me to disengage from their constant fights and other button-pushing behaviors. I have tried this, and realized that although I am disengaging from them, it is more me simply going through the motions so that I can convince myself that I’m doing it, and thus I’m displaying myself in a positive light by being dutiful, obedient and following the recommendations.
“What I realize now is that as I go through the motions, I am still being influenced by mass beliefs within society that says if you ignore your children you are a neglectful and bad mother. In fact, my children themselves often reflect this back to me, because if I even physically disengage from them, they find me - or perhaps a more fitting expression would be hunt me down - and express, ‘Mama, how can you not care about us. You don’t love us anymore. Why would you even have us if you didn’t care about us? You’re so mean.’
“Now, at work, although I am surrounded by poorly behaved - by society standards -adolescents, I also have spent the last year exploring how within my role as their therapist/counselor I am not responsible for them. I am more open to being a different kind of therapist, one who does not rescue or measure success by outcome. This frees up my energy to focus on myself even when I am working with them, because their choice doesn’t matter to me, and it is not a reflection of me.
“I have explored this therapeutic issue long enough and consistently enough that my own personal energy can be one of caring, but it also can be one free of anxiety, worries and frustration because their choices do not reflect me, do not change who I am, or even dictate my choices in response.
“Not so, I’m afraid, when it comes to my own children. What became interesting to me was that as I began to see how my low energy was being expressed to gain my attention, that I was remaining unaware of my UNexpressed parenting beliefs - and we all know how powerful those can be - I began my usual, ‘Oh, that’s cool, but what the hell am I going to do to change this?’
“I began my automatic response of clutching my energy, because I felt like I had to brainstorm a method, a technique, to relieve this issue and change what I was doing. However, what happened next became my lesson for the week, giving me the experience and not just the theory of what Elias was sharing in 1503. Just by giving this issue my attention and allowing myself to recognize that I was still being influenced by aligning myself with traditional parenting beliefs, I magically felt my energy become less stagnant and heavy while in my home, experiencing it perhaps not completely joyful, playful or calm as I have while at work, but at least less heavier, draining.
“Perhaps I would not have to complicate the picture by finding the exact technical hoops to jump through after all (inaudible).”
So that’s kinda what I want to talk about today, and I don’t know if you have anything that you want to say about it before I ask you any questions.
ELIAS: This is the beginning of your own example to yourself of becoming aware of your own energy and what influences that. In recognizing the difference in how you interact with the individuals that you counsel and the difference in how you interact with your children is a very significant step, for this offers you considerable information; and in this, remembering that it is not necessary to develop or invent methods to alter your perception and therefore alter your energy. You can allow yourself the freedom merely to notice what you are doing and notice what is influencing you or what is motivating you.
The first, most significant element is noticing what you are doing, and that is what you are engaging, and that is very powerful. For without knowing objectively or identifying what you are actually doing, it may be quite difficult to change that. For if you are not aware objectively of what you are actually doing, you are relying upon thought to translate what you are doing, and what you THINK you are doing and what you are actually doing many times are not the same. And the reason is that thought is very strongly influenced by attention. Therefore, if your attention is not directed to what you are actually doing, the information that is being offered to the thought mechanism is inaccurate, and therefore what you think you are doing and what you are actually doing can be two different expressions simultaneously.
This is what creates confusion for many individuals, and obstacles, for it becomes very difficult to alter what you are doing when you are not doing what you think you are doing.
ALICIA: So I guess what I’m trying to figure out is where do I go next with this, because I’m obviously not at the end and I still feel very drained by them on occasion. And then of course I feel badly about that, and it doesn’t feel like those relationships in that area are very satisfactory to me at all, and I feel like I have done a lot of work on myself in other areas and this is sort of one that I haven’t for whatever reason, even though I spend most of my time with them. So I don’t know what to do; I’m going back to doing here.
ELIAS: You are already engaging the direction that will be very beneficial. Now it is a matter of allowing yourself a time framework in which you are genuinely paying attention and noticing what you are doing, what you are feeling, and acknowledge that.
Remember our exercise in appreciation. Now, move that into an acknowledgement of what you are doing, rather than struggling, rather than opposing what you are doing in -
ALICIA: Yes, I think that’s what I do.
ELIAS: - in recognizing that -
ALICIA: Can you give me like acknowledging what you are doing? I want to make sure I understand exactly what you mean by that.
ELIAS: When you notice that you are generating an expression such as avoidance, rather than immediately becoming distressed or frustrated with yourself -
ALICIA: Because I’m choosing avoidance.
ELIAS: - in noticing that and recognizing that that is actually what you are doing - rather than moving into that expression, allow yourself to pause and merely acknowledge: “Yes, this is what I am doing. Yes, this is what I am feeling.” Do not attempt to discover a method to change it. Do not attempt to push it away. Do not judge it.
ALICIA: Okay.
ELIAS: Merely acknowledge, “This is actually what I am doing.” This is all that you are to express to yourself. You are expressing an acknowledgement of what is actually occurring, in similar manner to pausing and noticing and actually expressing to yourself in a moment: I am making a sandwich. There is no judgement in making the sandwich. It is merely an acknowledgment of an action that is occurring that you are engaging, without the good or the bad, merely noticing that it is occurring. That is the first step.
ALICIA: Okay.
ELIAS: And that you may practice with, for merely allowing yourself to acknowledge and not judge what you are doing allows you to practice being comfortable with yourself, in which you are not placing ideals upon yourself, you are not placing expectations upon yourself in which “I SHOULD be expressing in this manner,” or “I should NOT be expressing in this manner,” or “This is bad; why am I expressing this?” or expressing to yourself, “I love my children. Why do I express this frustration or this drain? Why can I not be generating that caring without the concern with my children as I do with these other individuals that I interact with?”
For in those types of expressions, what you are doing is generating comparisons, which is an opposing energy, and you are generating more and more of an importance concerning what you do not want. What you do not want becomes more and more important, and when it becomes important you concentrate upon it and you move your attention to it more and more, and therefore you perpetuate it and you create precisely that.
But you can interrupt that in acknowledging, “This is what I am doing. This is what I am feeling.” Just as within your interactions with the other individuals, the other children, their expressions you recognize does not diminish you and does not dictate to you, and is not a reflection of your value.
ALICIA: Right.
ELIAS: Therefore, you can remind yourself when you acknowledge what you are doing or what you are feeling, this is an element of you. And you are not diminished and you are not bad and you are not devalued, merely that you are experiencing a frustration or that you are experiencing a lack of energy or that you are generating an avoidance of a situation. That is what you are doing in that moment. It is merely an action.
ALICIA: You know I think that really crystalizes and helps a lot, because I think the other display of behavior that I notice, Elias, but in my frustration I have a tendency to yell at them, and the thing is that as you are talking, I’m realizing, yeah, I don’t just do that kind of behavior, but then I sort of condemn myself or judge myself -
ELIAS: Correct.
ALICIA: - for having that, which probably shifts how the outcome is going to be or how their energy is.
ELIAS: You are quite correct.
ALICIA: Because I think if I just disconnect from them, they will quiet down, and they don’t. It’s probably because I’m judging myself and opposing myself with not just letting something be.
ELIAS: You are quite correct. And what occurs is you generate the judgement with yourself and discount yourself, and to justify that you engage yelling at them.
ALICIA: Oh! So the yelling comes after?
ELIAS: Correct. That is an action that is a reaction to your own judgement.
ALICIA: Oh! That’s very interesting.
ELIAS: If you are genuinely paying attention and noticing, whatever you express outwardly has already been being formed in energy before it is expressed; therefore, the judgement that you expressed is an ongoing association. And in that, the yelling is a justification for the discounting and the judgement that you are already expressing within yourself. It offers you an outlet of a reason to be expressing that judgement with yourself.
ALICIA: I do have a relationship with one of my sons, Teddy, that seems exceptionally challenging for me, and he could be really emotionally abusive to me, and I’m just wondering is that a reflection of me, or is he going through something on his own? And I really don’t know how to handle it, because he can really be so out of the box with it on one hand, and yet it seems like up to this point everything that I have said or done to diminish that hasn’t been effective.
ELIAS: Correct.
ALICIA: So is that part of what you’re talking about?
ELIAS: Yes. For it is a matter of YOUR energy.
ALICIA: My energy.
ELIAS: This is the snare and the trap that most individuals fall into. They project their energy and their attention to another individual and attempt to evaluate what is occurring within the other individual, and attempt to invent a method that they can engage to alter the other individual’s behavior. And this is the reverse of what creates success.
What creates success is when YOU change YOUR energy, you change what is occurring.
All of you directly interact with other individuals’ energies. Once you receive it, you then configure that and create the physical manifestation and the expression of the other individual. When you change your energy, you change your perception. You also change how you are receiving the other individual’s energy, and therefore you change how it is configured.
ALICIA: Well, here’s my confusion on that, because I’ve watched this, and there are times where it seems to me that I come home and I’m really in a pretty good mood, but they start fighting and yell and scream amongst themselves. So what you are saying is, that’s MY energy. But why doesn’t it feel that way to me?
ELIAS: As I have expressed many, many times, feelings and thinking are not indicators of the energy that you are projecting.
ALICIA: Oh, I remember you saying that now.
ELIAS: DOING is what indicates to you what type of energy you are projecting, and much of that DOING for many individuals, yourself also, is so familiar that you do not recognize what you are doing, such as generating automatic associations and expectations. That does not require continuous replay and thought; you merely do it.
ALICIA: So if they’re hollering and screaming at each other, then is that saying that I’m holding an agitated energy?
ELIAS: Yes. Let me offer you an example, a hypothetical example that you may directly apply to yourself. Hypothetically, let us say that you engage an interaction with your son and it is a conflicting interaction, and you are quite distressed concerning what occurs in the interaction. Subsequently, once that interaction is ended, you may not necessarily be incorporating a thought process concerning it, but within the next day you may recall that interaction and you may be distressed again, and you may even by frustrated or angry, and you may engage a conversation with a friend or a colleague, and you may express somewhat of a recount of what occurred OR you may merely express how you feel concerning the incident. And perhaps you disengage that interaction and you are no longer engaging thinking concerning the incident again, and within the following day you recall the incident again, and you may be generating some interaction and reengaging those feelings of frustration or anger, and now you are beginning to include some feelings of discounting of yourself that you did not handle the situation correctly.
Now; this energy is continuing regardless of whether you are thinking of it or not.
ALICIA: Oh! Okay.
ELIAS: And the reason you continue to replay or revisit the incident and reevaluate it, is that that energy is continuing to be expressed and projected. And not only is that energy continuing to be expressed, but some elements of that energy are connecting with its target: your son.
Whether you are in physical proximity with him or not, and whether you are actually engaging him or not, energy does not require physical proximity, and it does not require a physical interaction to be transmitted and to be received.
Therefore, in a particular day, perhaps days later, you may return home and you may assess yourself to be in a good mood and you may be FEELING neutral, and you may walk into your home and be surprised that you are presenting to yourself expressions from your son that you view are unwarranted, that you have not provoked, and this creates confusion, for it appears to you, in your common vernacular, that the child is expressing out of the blue.
ALICIA: Right.
ELIAS: With no provocation.
ALICIA: Right.
ELIAS: In actuality, this is an example of your feelings are not an accurate indicator of your energy. What you are DOING in an ongoing manner IS an indicator of your energy.
ALICIA: Okay, that makes a lot of sense. But then the question becomes, if it sticks around, if it’s agitation, if the energy is out there -
ELIAS: If you are noticing that, you can change it.
ALICIA: Right. But let’s say it’s energy from two or three days before.
ELIAS: Correct. But if you are being present, it would not be energy from two or three days prior. For if you are present and if you are aware of what you are doing, you can change that.
ALICIA: So if you’re not aware. If I walk in the door and I’m not aware of where I am this very minute -
ELIAS: Just as I expressed in the exercise of acknowledging, what is not occurring in that hypothetical scenario? There is no acknowledging. You are not acknowledging, “I am experiencing this.” You are merely projecting.
ALICIA: Right.
ELIAS: You are recounting, you are reinforcing, but you are not acknowledging, and therefore you continue to project it.
ALICIA: Right. Okay, so there is something very powerful about the acknowledgement piece.
ELIAS: Yes. VERY powerful.
ALICIA: In terms of it changing, -
ELIAS: Yes.
ALICIA: - altering things.
ELIAS: Yes.
ALICIA: Or, - I don’t even know if I want to use that word - but I think I understand what you’re saying. I will look forward to hearing the tape, because I think there’s a lot of stuff in there that you were saying. (Elias laughs)
Speaking of energy, I have to ask - and maybe this is my energy - but your energy feels different to me today. Or is that MY energy?
ELIAS: It is you generating more of an openness.
ALICIA: Oh. Okay.
ELIAS: You are genuinely moving, my friend, and you are genuinely creating more of an openness and more of a willingness to genuinely engage.
ALICIA: But you seem softer to me, or quieter. Is that my openness that’s doing that?
ELIAS: Yes. You are allowing yourself to receive my energy more accurately.
ALICIA: Wow. Okay. Now, does it also make sense that I am feeling more scattered as I become more open?
ELIAS: Yes.
ALICIA: I really feel like my brain is all over the place and I’m not computing right now. (Elias chuckles) Like, I normally feel like I have what I would call more control.
ELIAS: But you are assimilating.
ALICIA: Right, but it’s a feeling that I sort of feel like I don’t have a lot of self-control kind of thing, you know? I’m not sure, like I don’t know how to express myself or I’m sort of feeling like I’m short circuiting. (Elias chuckles) But that’s because I am becoming more open?
ELIAS: Yes, and that is temporary. You will become more acclimated and more familiar with being more directed and generating more clarity.
ALICIA: I’ve had like six sessions with you, and this is the first time I’m really feeling affected by it. Is that connected to the openness?
ELIAS: Yes. Quite so.
ALICIA: (Chuckles) Okay. That’s good to know. (Elias chuckles)
All right. Well, I should let you go because my time is up, but I appreciate always our conversations.
ELIAS: As do I, my friend. And I shall be offering my energy to you continuously in encouragement.
ALICIA: Thank you.
ELIAS: In great appreciation of you and in dear lovingness, au revoir.
ALICIA: Au revoir.
(Elias departs after 41 minutes.)
Copyright 2007 Mary Ennis, All Rights Reserved.