Hello, dear Reader!
Yes, we usually do our ‘He Says, She Says…‘ posts on Sundays, but last Sunday was our 95th Monthaversary of the day we were married, and yesterday would have been Mike’s sister’s birthday, so things kinda got pushed forward. We were going to let it go until next Sunday, but Marcia’s current schedule gives her little free time for computer work and we didn’t want you to think we’d abandoned you entirely. To that end, this is going to be primarily a ‘He Says’ post. Marcia does reserve final editing rights, of course!
The title for this post is ‘Basic Math’, and it was born out of a random thought I had recently. Describing how my mind tends to ricochet from one thought to another (building bridges out of tenuous strings) might be difficult, not least because I’m not entirely sure how it works myself. However, I’ve been thinking a lot about infinity lately, and correlating that concept against what ‘seems’ to be a finite reality – here, on this planet, in this time, etc. It reminds me of this quote from Seth:
“… there is a period of stress in between beliefs, so to speak, while you dispense with one set and are learning to use another.
“But here you become involved with one of the most meaningful aspects of the nature of personal reality, as you test your thoughts against what seems to be. There may be a time before you learn how to change your thoughts effectively, but you are engaged in a basic meaningful endeavor.
“The truth is then that you form your reality directly. You react consciously and unconsciously to your beliefs. You collect from the physical universe, and the interior one, data that seems to correlate with your beliefs.†~ The Individual and the Nature of Mass Events, session 850.
So, what does this have to do with math? Well, as Mike Dooley is fond of saying, ‘Thoughts become things.” And what I’m talking about here is really basic math – addition and subtraction. We’re often fond of thinking that specific thoughts will bring specific events, things, people or experiences into our lives, and I have no arguments with that. However, that falls under a more general category of ‘intention’. There’s a section in the ‘consciouscreation.com‘ writings that says:
“Intention, Spontaneity
It is the intention that guides you, just as in the moment it is the impulse that guides you. With practice it becomes easier and easier. And the conscious selection of probabilities is a natural evolution. But this selection, this conscious selection, this evolution does not imply loss of spontaneity, adventure or surprise. It is like choosing the river you will put your raft upon. But it cannot name, nor shall it need to, all the variables of the experience of the raft on the river. Which fish to jump, which rock, which rapids. These emerge perfectly and spontaneously, evoking your responses in a perfect demonstration of spontaneous free creation. If it were any other way, any other choice would demand that you would *HAVE TO* CONSCIOUSLY create every other aspect.”
And so, finally, we get to the point of my post. You knew we’d get there eventually, and I thank you for your patience. While we can and do intend specific outcomes, we don’t have to and wouldn’t want to consciously create every rock in our stream or every moment of our lives. How long do you think it would take you to consciously imagine the individual leaves on one oak tree? But while we’re not consciously aware of it, our general thought patterns also influence the overall direction of our lives. I’ll use myself as an example. From back when I first returned to reading Seth (NB: I first read ‘Seth Speaks‘ back into the 80s but had other things to discover before working my way back to Seth’s books), the one thing I remembered above everything else was that our beliefs form the basis of our experience. From that I got the idea that if there were things in my life that I didn’t want, I had to hunt down and remove the beliefs that were causing that experience. Over the next decade or so I went through a process of uncovering and removing every negative belief I could find within my panoply of beliefs.
I’ve written about this before, specifically in my ‘Mike’s Writings‘ posts, so I’m not going to go into any great detail here, but the bottom line is that my focus was on ‘subtraction’, on removing things from my system of beliefs. At the same time I was conscious of removing myself from situations and ideas that no longer interested me – war, alcohol, cigarettes, people with a generally negative disposition, those who disagree with me… Okay, so I’m kidding about the last one. But again, the overall emphasis of my thoughts was toward removing things, refining things, searching for the ‘core’ of ideas, eliminating peripheral concepts, ceremonies, etc. It was important to me to ‘subtract’ things from my life.
While I was aware of the fact that my (physical) life was also ‘slimming down’, I didn’t make a direct connection between the two until recently. Over the years Marcia and I lost our car, our employment, a number of our old friends (mostly due to moving about), finances… a lot of things.
The way my life was heading didn’t make sense to me because in my imagination/ intention I was also adding things – new friends, new understandings, new home, etc. but they weren’t showing up – in this reality. From the consciouscreation.com site again:
“Call forth that which you seek. And acknowledge and consider it done upon this calling forth. It is simply a question of you stepping into this choice. How do you do this? You do it. You align with the knowing of yourself who tells you this truth and you accept no alternatives. You move literally into that life. So that your thoughts, your expectations, your projections, your feelings and your ideas all align with that life. If you believe that there is something more for you to do then you must discover what this more is and do it. Or you must change the belief. The choice is yours.
Whenever you find yourselves in discussion of how creation works, of how beliefs work, of progress or failure, of success in your venture, or impatience with waiting for success, you are in these moments actively living your beliefs. So you must look at these moments and decide what you are being told and what you are telling yourself. If you are saying, “There is some further requirement†then you are withholding the outcome until such time as you discover the further requirement and fulfill it. But it is all belief. It is no more real than any other belief. It is only your experience of events through these beliefs, which convinces you of their reality.
So you must decide. Does the experience make it REAL or is the experience an accurate reflection of an active belief? This will lead you to the question, “What is real?†What IS real? The rational mind will always supply the answer based on past experience. But we would caution you that this is NOT reality. This is your experience of reality through the filter of your belief system. If you believe it is hard, it is hard. If you believe you can UNCREATE, you can, and do. If you believe in the trustworthiness of the self, if you believe it is possible, it is correct, it is right, and it is appropriate for you to have what you want in your life, then you will. To the extent that you do not, you do not.
Now that wasn’t so hard. And here is your biggest downfall – in the moment that you look at your life, and you determine that you do NOT, and so you do not, you judge yourselves. You say, “What is wrong with me? Why is this so hard? What am I doing wrong?†And hopefully, “How can I change it?†Forget the first three; remember the last. And once again, we are back to where we started. You change your experience by changing your beliefs. How can such a simple concept be so devilishly tricky? It is tricky because the rational mind accepts experience as fact. Now, you of all people, having been given multiple magical experiences by yourselves and by others seeking to show you the ease and grace that is possible, even YOU still follow this rule: “Experience equals fact. Fact is immutable. Change is impossible.†But you know better. You know in each moment where your larger frame of reference lies. AND you know if it lies WITH you, that is, towards what you seek, or against you, that is, in denial of what you seek.
You can ask yourself at any moment and know the truth. And if you will, once having asked this question, ask yourself further, “Beliefs, show yourselves to me, which create this truth in this moment†– they will be plainly evident. So long as you remember that they are NOT facts, but only beliefs. This is a game you have played with yourselves for eons. For if you ask yourself at any moment to look beyond what you KNOW to ask what you know ABOUT what you know, you will know instantly in what frame of mind, in what probable reality, in what reference point to the higher self you presently reside. And then you may choose. If you do not wish to reside where you are, then you may choose to reside somewhere else.”
So… as I said at the beginning of this post, the idea of addition/subtraction as an overarching system of belief is something that only recently came to me. From the quote above: “You say, “What is wrong with me? Why is this so hard? What am I doing wrong?†And hopefully, “How can I change it?†Forget the first three; remember the last.” If we’re asking ourselves what we’re doing wrong, then we’re still ‘subtracting’. We’re still trying to figure out what to remove from our lives or from our beliefs so that things can be made right. The paragraph immediately following the quote above (emphasis mine) is:
“The greatest obstacle for you is that your rational mind will tell you, does tell you, continually tells you that this is not possible, precisely because the rational mind interprets all experience as FACT. “Water boils at 212 degrees. The air has oxygen in it, which you breathe. The earth has an atmosphere that keeps you alive. Your current position and the past that brought you to it have complete control over your present moment and any future moments. Everything is predictable. There is no such thing as creation. Or if there is, it is not reliable.†Be clear. This IS the common belief system in which you operate. Every belief you hold, nourish, or contemplate outside of this system, must be uniquely strengthened. Must be cherished. Must be properly maintained, and protected. This is the task you have chosen. To live the magical in the world of the mundane.”
It’s the last section of this paragraph that I think is the most important. When we decide to shift away from removing the negatives in our lives and focus instead on strengthening the positives, we move from subtraction to addition. We begin to focus on adding new ideas, new thoughts, new beliefs. We’re still not choosing every rock in the river, but we have decided to follow a different channel in the stream. On this new path we choose primarily things that make us feel good. We choose beliefs and ideas that strengthen our connections to each other and All That Is. We celebrate our lives rather than condemning them. We open ourselves up to possibility rather than closing ourselves off to intrusion.
Is there a ‘right’ path and a ‘wrong’ one? No, of course not. Everyone must decide his or her own path, and all paths are valid. I do believe some paths are easier than others. That’s the way I’m headed – adding to my life from thoughts and ideas that celebrate my infinity rather than continuing to remove from my life that which I no longer need.
I’m going to end this with one of my favourite quotes from Seth:
“Believe then, that you are a being unlimited by nature, born into flesh to materialize as best you can the great joy and spontaneity of your nature.†~ The Nature of Personal Reality, session 617.
Love,
Mike.
(Editor Marcia here: What more could I add? [Pun intended … ] Nothing … Mike says it all perfectly!)
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EDIT: Good Morning! There was one idea I forgot to add to yesterday’s post, so I ran it past Marcia this morning and figured I’d best tag it on the end. It’s a bit trick to explain; as Seth once said, time is difficult to explain when one must take time to do it. But really, it lies at the heart of all beliefs, and that is whether one sees beliefs themselves as being defining or limiting. Let me see if I can explain. Here you are, an infinite multidimensional reality, and there’s no way you can express all of yourself into physical space. That in itself is a belief, so already you see the challenges we face. But what came to me is to look at it from the perspective of the proverbial blank slate. One way is to look at things as a blank canvas, the way an artist would. The white page is the background onto which one overlays the colours that will create the painting (or reality, in this case). That’s an additive process. The other way to look at beliefs is to see that white is a synthesis of all colours, so in order to reveal some of them one must begin by removing others. In other words, one begins with ‘everything’ and then decides what must be shunted aside or stripped away in order to fit what’s left into this finite physical space. That’s a subtractive process. The way I approached things for many years was to choose the latter, but in some ways the former makes more sense.
Love,
Mike.