The Choice of a Difficult Life
Topics:
“The Choice of a Difficult Life”
“The Personal Filing System of All Experiences”
“Love Is Never Invalid”
Thursday, April 16, 2026 (Private/In Person)
Participants: Mary (Michael), Jean (Lyla) and Anon
(Audio begins partway through session)
JEAN: Okay, I want to explore, not from a perspective of digging up trauma and stuff like that, but just the mechanics in this particular time period where you said I chose a difficult life. How does that happen? You know, we talked about the Dolores, I call it the Dolores Cannon thing, that before, there was an agreement with probabilities and things like that. Can we just talk about that? Does that mean… what, exactly?
ELIAS: It’s easier and will make more sense to you if you look at the situation from the perspective of essence.
JEAN: Sure. Sure.
ELIAS: That you as an essence choose a physical dimension to engage, and then you consider what type of expressions, (dog barks) what type of directions, (dog barks) – you can place that here. (A dog is placed in Mary’s lap.) Very well. In this, the essence, you as the essence, you evaluate the characteristics of that dimension. You evaluate what the design of it is, and then that allows you to evaluate how many focuses you initiate into that reality. It allows you to move in a direction in which you evaluate your discoveries or what you can discover in that or what you are interested in or what the complexity or lack of complexity is, and what you want to explore.
In this reality, many if not most essences that engage this reality choose many focuses because there’s so much to explore. There’s so much diversity. And because there is that emotional aspect to your reality, it adds another dimension of depth, so to speak, in relation to the experiences because without that emotional complexity any of what you think of as bad experiences wouldn’t necessarily be bad experiences, because they wouldn’t feel bad. But that’s fascinating to essence. (Jean chuckles) There are so many experiences to be had. From that perspective, as essence you would naturally want to explore all different types of emotional expressions.
Now; let me express it to you in this manner. Think about actors. Generally actors or what you think of as good actors, anyone that’s worth their salt (chuckles), generally what are the types of roles that they love to play? Villains. They love to play the bad guy. Why? Because there’s much more complexity in that and in that, there’s more intensity. There’s more depth. There’s more breadth of the experiences, because they’re not experienced and over. They’re experienced and they linger, because that’s what you do with uncomfortable or what you think of as bad experiences. You pay attention to them for a time. Good experiences you have, you’re excited, and then they’re done. Therefore essences generally choose many focuses that incorporate somehow into their intent either difficulty or anguish or hardship. Think about all of your wars and all of the individuals that participate in all of your wars, and the depth of the experiences that are traumatic.
Now; I would say that as you continue in this shift, as I’ve said, this is part of why I engage with all of you, to minimize that factor of trauma in relation to the shift. Not in relation to your choice of experiences or life experiences, but in relation to shifting. That can also cause trauma, and in relation to that I offer information to minimize that, but there are many people whose intents, including you, involve some form of difficulty or discomfort or trauma, or all of those and trauma and fear. Some include terror. It’s not something wrong. It’s not something bad. It’s only your perception that judges it as wrong and bad, or that something must be wrong with you if you choose to incorporate those experiences because of course if nothing’s wrong with you, you’re going to always choose light and joy. No, you won’t. (Laughs)
And in that, why wouldn’t you explore complexities? Why wouldn’t you explore depths of despair or anguish or fear? And in that, there are not a lot of focuses that essences generate that will incorporate an intent of misery in their life, which would mean that they’re exploring every avenue and aspect of misery throughout their entire life. There aren’t many that do that and I would say that, for the most part, the individuals in physical focus that have that type of intent are not thinkers. Most of the individuals that do incorporate some aspects of trauma and despair and considerable discomfort are thinkers and that allows them to pull themselves out of it. Therefore they don’t incorporate those terrible, in your perceptions, experiences forever or for their entire lifetime. They eventually move to a point in which they move beyond that and they can use their experiences for different directions and as learning experiences for when they’re not exploring that anguish or that terror.
Therefore I’d say that there are many, many, many reasons that essences would choose this type of intent and it’s only you that judges it as bad, until you move to a point and recognize that that aspect of duplicity isn’t set in stone. It’s all a matter of your own perception. Anything you experience you can look at from different angles, and when you change perspective you change how you see those experiences and they then can change meaning for you.
Generally speaking, many individuals that are not thinkers don’t have a tendency to evaluate experiences from other angles. Therefore they see them much more black and white, and once they have an experience, they generally – as all of you do – make an association with that experience and set it in stone and that’s what it means and that’s it. And they don’t generally change that unless something happens to interrupt that for them somehow. That’s what I do with many of them. But on their own, they don’t necessarily have a tendency to do that, although I will say first of all, that’s not a rule, and secondly that at this time in this aspect of the shift they are evaluating more than they have in any other time framework. Therefore that’s another change that would be associated with this shift in consciousness.
Therefore I’d say that be encouraged, you didn’t choose misery. (Both laugh)
JEAN: (Indicating Anon) Could you say this lovely person also chose a difficult life?
ELIAS: Oh yes. Oh yes. Definitely. I’d say that once again it’s not something that you’re necessarily going to carry through until your death, but (to Anon) as also with you, it can be challenging to learn how to step out of that and learn how to stop holding onto the black and white, and stop holding on to the associations as being set in stone. Every experience that people have, you incorporate an immediate process with. Everyone does, and every experience includes this, and I spoke about this in the early time frameworks of my interactions with people. And in that, what you do is – and you do it exceptionally fast, as fast as you think, perhaps even faster – you have an experience and you immediately make a judgment about that experience. That’s the duplicity that enters into your experience and your existence. You immediately make a judgment about what type of experience this is: It’s good. It’s bad. It’s neutral. It’s terrible. It’s exquisite.
In that, in a manner of speaking very figuratively, you then place that association in your own personal filing system of all of your experiences. And then, whenever a similar experience occurs, your physical brain immediately moves to that filing system and is rifling through it, trying to find another experience that has an association with that type of experience already, so that it can stamp it: “This is a good experience.” “This is a bad experience.” And without thinking, you automatically do that with every single experience that you have. It doesn’t matter what it is. If you stub your toe, you have an association with that. And it’s not only that you have the association with your own experience, but you’re going to share that with other individuals: “If you do that, that’s going to hurt. You’re not going to be happy, because that’s a bad experience.” It’s automatic.
Or if you’re not telling someone that it’s going to be terrible for them, you’re going to tell them how terrible it was for you and they’re going to make an association: “Oh no! This is going to be a terrible experience. I never want to do that.” That’s also part of how you all connect with each other, in how you share your experiences.
ANON: Hm. Isn’t it the truth!
ELIAS: In that, when you have a difficult life, you make an immediate association that difficulty means bad. It doesn’t simply mean challenge, it means bad. And therefore when you share your experiences with other individuals, then you communicate that your experiences were bad and therefore the other individual is either connecting with you in solidarity with you, that they have similar experiences, or they’re connecting with you in evaluating their own experiences and being grateful that they don’t have yours, but they still make the same judgments as you do.
In this, there is, there’s a point to experiencing difficult lives when you begin to become more self-aware and recognize that interconnectedness and recognizing what effect you have with other people and how you influence them by your behavior and what you share—
JEAN: And that’s what you were talking about, echoing.
ELIAS: Yes.
JEAN: Yeah, you’re echoing back to people.
ELIAS: Or you echo yourself. You can do that with yourself also. If you are repeating the accounts of your experiences over and over and over again, you’re reinforcing that one side of duplicity and you’re influencing other individuals to do the same.
JEAN: This is behavior. I never thought it as behavior.
ELIAS: It is behavior, yes. And the more self-aware you become, the more aware of your own behavior and what that means you are. And in that, that’s how you can genuinely move in a direction of what I’ve expressed to all of you about who do you actually want to be.
ANON: I have a question—
ELIAS: Yes, ma’am.
ANON: — of (inaudible) So as you were going through, I was thinking about these situations where bad things happen, and it could happen to me. But one of the things that I’ve noted over the years is sometimes – I was talking to Jean about this just yesterday – that sometimes there are things that happen to me and people instead, it becomes almost “Oh my god, I’m so sorry that happened to you,” and “That was so bad,” and “By god, that was awful,” and they keep reminding you of it, time and time again. Whereas maybe I’ve moved on from it and it wasn’t so… It was bad for me at the time.
And I thought of something, two instances, if you don’t mind if I say. So number one, a couple weeks after my brother passed away, the guy who was my first love in high school passed away abruptly. You know, he had had some health issues but he was sixty-seven, so very shocking. And I will admit, it was a case of unrequited love. We made out a few times or something like that, but it was nothing that… But everybody knew I was madly in love with him, and it went on for not just a year but several years. And after he passed, I had people send me a note and say, “I’m so sorry to hear that Pete passed away. I know you were in love with him,” and blah blah blah blah blah, almost going back to that in an indirect way of saying, ”Oh, you were in love with him, but just a reminder: he wasn’t in love with you.” You know, something like that. And I…
And then about the same time, a quote from an actor came up somewhere on social media. And they were talking about unrequited love, and this actor said, “Unrequited love! That’s a beautiful thing. You loved. You won. Why do people look at it as a bad thing?” And so I’m kind of thinking about that, as well as my grandfather came to this country in 1916 from Serbia. And you know, nothing more than a junior high education, made a really nice living in farming, and along the way he made a good deal of money and very successful as a farmer. He didn’t care. He just loved being here and always said, “I’m just so thankful to be in the United States.” And during the end of his life, one of the neighbors who owned a car dealership sort of finagled a piece of property out of my grandfather and underpaid for it. And it never bothered my grandfather but there were relatives of mine who up until they died said, “Oh, your grandfather got screwed over.” And I’m just like, “He didn’t see it that way.” And I sort of… You know, I think Emma… Is that what you’re getting at? It’s like you can, there can be a lesson in—
ELIAS: Perspective.
ANON: — in all of this.
ELIAS: Oh, absolutely.
ANON: It’s all about perspective. Just like I joked with the guy, because he and I – the guy from high school and I kept in touch and I’m like, “You blew it with me, buddy.” (Elias chuckles) And he’s like, “I sure did.” We laughed about it. But you know… And I had no problem, and I am… I said… It was absolutely unrequited love, I made a fool of myself and I was in love with him and there was no basis for it, and I’m okay with that and I have been for thirty-five years or forty years.
ELIAS: What does that mean, there was no basis for it?
ANON: There was no basis, the fact that he didn’t like me back. (Laughs)
ELIAS: That is, that is very significant as a point.
ANON: In what way?
ELIAS: That’s another piece that you judge by, is reciprocation. That especially in relationships that there has to be reciprocation or it’s invalid. No, it’s not. Love is never invalid, ever.
ANON: That was… Yeah, that was… That’s the first time I’ve heard that in fifty years, you know. And it was like… Trust me, I made a fool of myself. (Elias chuckles) It was embarrassing. A lot of people reminded me, “Do you know what you did?” Yeah, I do. I let it all out there, made a fool of myself. It kind of got me ready for life, which was good, but yeah, I never looked at it that way before. All I looked at it as… almost a point of embarrassment.
ELIAS: And I would say--
ANON: But my grandfather did not look at it as a point of embarrassment. He was just happy to be here. He lived to be a hundred years old. Yeah.
ELIAS: Precisely. And I would say that reciprocation is a huge piece with a lot of experiences, and it holds so much expectations. That’s why you think or you perceive that you made a fool of yourself. No, you didn’t. I’d say that love can make you do many things that seem foolish or ludicrous, but they’re not. That’s what you feel. It’s not foolish. It’s not ludicrous. It’s expressing yourself. It’s expressing what you feel, whether it’s reciprocated or not. And in that, the aspect of duplicity comes into play only when you judge that in relation to reciprocation: if it isn’t reciprocated, then you’re foolish. But you’re not. You’re simply expressing what you feel and you’re expressing that love and that’s not foolish, that’s wonderful. And in that, if you take out the reciprocation piece you take out the expectation piece, which is what happened with the other individual, is that there was no expectation. Therefore it didn’t matter if he was undercut financially or not. He got paid. Therefore that was enough. And in that, they had an exchange and that was good enough. He didn’t have an expectation of more.
ANON: Ah, okay.
ANON: And he didn’t have the expectation of that reciprocity from the other individual. Therefore that makes a very big difference in relation to your perception.
ANON: Sure. Thank you.
ELIAS: I’d say that that’s why you had a friendship with this individual and could incorporate that type of a relationship because after that foolishness, in your perception, then you have no more expectations.
ANON: Sure.
ELIAS: And if you don’t have the expectations, you have no expectation of the other individual in relation to what they give or don’t give.
JEAN: Thank you. Elias, so the bottom line, I can speak for my cousin and myself after choosing from the essence point a difficult life, we want to change probabilities. We want regeneration. We both want significant wealth. We want well-beingness, creativity and magic. And can we do that now?
ELIAS: Absolutely.
JEAN: And will you continue to work with each of us? (Indicating Anon) I know she needs to do trauma work, right? Serious. Get serious about it. But you’ll move us into these directions?
ELIAS: Absolutely. Absolutely.
(Audio ends after 33 minutes)
(Elias departs after 1 hour 2 minutes)
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