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the straight little sapling

Elias “gems”

ELIAS: “My story incorporates two saplings, both exactly identical, both newly growing; one growing naturally and reaching towards the sun and basking within its rays, and drinking naturally of the rain and resting to the moon. The other is looking around and is viewing the sky and is seeing the sun and is saying to itself, ‘Maybe I should be growing at night. The sun is very hot. It may burn me or it may sap my energy, and the rain is very wet and it gets all over me and I am not sure I am liking of this rain and I am not sure that it is making me grow properly, and maybe I should be investigating where this rain is coming from and I should be analyzing the sun rays to be sure that I am incorporating the proper vitamins, or maybe the moon is more friendly to my growth and I would grow taller if I am growing at nighttime, while this idiot sapling next to me is being stunted by the sun.’ And in the morning, the one sapling is stretching its newly formed branches and uncurling its soft leaves and growing within complete trust, and the other sapling in the morning is viewing the same sun and is looking at the beautifully formed other sapling and it is looking like this: (Here, Elias twists his body and face into a grotesque contortion.)

“Now; this story is about belief systems and the noticing of these belief systems. It is also about trust and connection. It also incorporates proper personal responsibility. The one trusting sapling incorporates a genuine personal responsibility in not trying to change or help the analyzing sapling, but as it grows true and strong and trusting it radiates an example.

“It shines in its essence as an example to the other sapling, and as the other sapling unconvolutes itself throughout the day, it notices the straight sapling and it chooses the focus of effortlessness and trust as being easier, for it has been shown an example. Therefore, be all the trusting, straight saplings, radiating your example.” [session 37, September 13, 1995]

Elias “gems”

Comments

VICKI: “I would like to pose a question that was posed to me today by Shynla [Cathy]. (To Cathy) You’re not going to ask it?

CATHY: Go ahead. I’m questioned out!

VICKI: Her question was, when you have a statement to make to another person that you know or that you feel may be conflicting for the other person, is that then incorrect? (To Cathy) Did I get that right? (Cathy nods)

ELIAS: To be expressing?

VICKI: To be expressing.

ELIAS: Not necessarily. We have engaged this specific issue previously within our sessions. If you are expressing within what you view to be your ‘best ability,’ very limiting terms, of essence, and are wishing no harmfulness to the other individual, you do yourself and the other individual no favor by withholding. As we have expressed previously, all is received within energy and consciousness regardless. Therefore, you hide nothing within your lack of expression. This is not to say that you shall engage another individual without examining your motivation, for if you hold any element of hurtfulness, then this must be examined first. But if your expression is to be truthful and also to be expressing from essence as the straight sapling, then within your responsibility within your expression, you may engage the other individual. Resulting action of the other individual subsequently is their responsibility, for they choose also, within probabilities, the response.

CATHY: Where does timing enter into this?

ELIAS: This, you may allow yourself a knowing. Within your individual expressions, you already know. If you are experiencing a continuous nagging, your timing has already been engaged and is present. If you do not experience a continuous nagging to be expressing to this individual, and you feel only a slight noticing, you may allow yourself the leeway, within your time element, to be presenting your information when it appears to you to be correct. Notice within your own feelings and thoughts. If you presently occupy your thoughts and feelings with this subject matter, your timing has presented itself already. Therefore, you only engage the action of creating conflict for yourself in not expressing.

CATHY: I remember that well! (Laughing) Thank you.

ELIAS: Be understanding within these expressions also, that you may quite effectively delude yourselves. Within your fear, you may express to yourselves, your timing element is not right; for you do not listen to your own expression and what your impulses are expressing to you. You do listen to your intellect and your rationalization of your expectation of response.

CATHY: Quite true!

ELIAS: Therefore, in listening to this expression, you prevent yourself from initiating the action of engagement. Each individual creates their own reality. Each individual creates their own response. This is not your, nor is this Kasha’s [Bill’s], responsibility. You hold enough responsibility for your own essence! It is not necessary or important that you understand another individual’s creation of their own reality and their expressions. It is important that you understand your own creation of your own reality and your own expressions. It is not incorrect to be expressing yourself outwardly, objectively, truthfully, if you are holding no malice.

CATHY: I think I’ve got it!

ELIAS: Very good!” [session 113, August 18, 1996]

ANON: “You discussed, it seemed to me, a lot about conflict – conflict that’s been arising in other places, as well as with us individually. I guess what I was wondering is, when an individual experiences conflict in another individual, and their belief is to want to help that individual to neutralize their conflict, is it possible to do that, or are you intrinsically placing a judgment on their engaging in conflict as not being right somehow?

ELIAS: Let me express to you that this is a common thought process within individuals in this physical focus. You lean in the direction of wishing to be helpful to each other. You place judgment upon the expressions of conflict, and you wish to be eliminating of conflict.

Now; in one respect, I express to you that conflict in itself is neither right or wrong. It is an experience, and it is a chosen experience. But I may also express to you that conflict creates a thickness in energy, and this be the reason that you move in the direction of not wishing to be creating conflict. You naturally magnate to pleasure, for this offers you less thickness within energy and more of an ease in your creation of your reality. If you are creating within any of your expressions within pleasure, you shall experience an ease. You shall express to yourself that you are noticing that your movement flows freely. If you are creating conflict, you shall also be noticing a thickness in energy. It shall appear to be more difficult, and you shall move more slowly in your direction within conflict.

You all hold an agreement objectively within this physical dimension that you do not appreciate conflict. Underlyingly, subjectively, you hold a knowing that conflict creates this thickness. Therefore, you also move in the direction of choosing to be noticing conflict and expressing to yourselves and to other individuals that you wish to be eliminating of these expressions of conflict, therefore providing yourselves with more of an ease in creating your reality.

You do this with yourselves and you do this with other individuals. If you yourselves are experiencing conflict, you wish to be eliminating of your own conflict, that you may be experiencing less thickness and more of an ease in your creation of your reality. As you witness and view another individual experiencing conflict and creating conflict, you also move in the direction of the expression that you wish to be eliminating of that expression also.

In this, as I have stated, in one respect you are creating a judgment upon the choice of experience of the individual which is creating conflict, but within another respect you are recognizing that the individual is creating thickness, and they themselves wish not to be creating thickness. Therefore, you choose to be helpful.

Now; I have expressed to you many times, you may not be creating another individual’s reality, but you may be influencing. You may be influencing if the other individual is accepting of your expression. If the other individual is NOT accepting of your expression, which is their choice, you shall not be influencing, for the point is not to be concerning yourselves with other individuals and their creation of their reality, but to be concerning yourself with yourself and your creation of your reality, and that creation which offers YOU less thickness and less conflict and more of an ease, for in your creation of this within yourself, you are automatically lending energy to other individuals in their discovery of their ability to be creating of the same action.

This is the point of our little sapling story, which offers no expression at all to the convoluted little sapling, but merely concerns itself with self and growing in the manner that it is growing and is most efficient for itself. It does not offer direction. It does not offer helpfulness. It offers merely the expression of being that may be viewed, and in this offers what you term in physical focus to be an example of a direction that creates no conflict and no thickness, but is recognizing that the convoluted little sapling is creating its reality, and may be creating and IS creating their own conflict quite purposefully.” [session 387, April 24, 1999]

DAWN: “I think my last two questions, like Michael said, kind of lump together. I was going to ask about becoming obsessed with people who seem to create lots of drama and seem to be making no progress, in their own assessment or anyone else’s, and sometimes when people act like that, I just have a big dislike for them and I don’t understand why, but that seems to relate to the orientation of soft.

ELIAS: Partially.

Now; let me also express to you that within this time framework, you move yourself into a slightly different position with this particular type of draw that you create with yourself, for you do draw yourself to interactions with individuals in these types of expressions and situations, as do other individuals.

Now; in this, within your present probabilities and within your present movements, what you are creating is another opportunity. This is not merely related to your choice of orientation, although in part, as I have stated, it is related to your orientation. But another aspect of this, in why you draw yourself to these types of interactions with these individuals, is that you may recognize your own participation and REDEFINE HELPFULNESS.

You hold aspects of belief systems which direct you in certain manners that express quite defined methods of helpfulness and supportiveness to other individuals, and the expression is to be offering to them another ‘method’ as to how they may be repairing their ‘broken’ situation or as to how they may be creating more efficiently within their situation, or you may also be attempting to be offering helpfulness and supportiveness to other individuals in attempting to be easing their expression.

But you are also noticing that you are experiencing frustration as they are not accepting your expression. They are not following your advice; they are not accepting of your expression. Once again, what be the matter with these individuals?

I express to you, this once again is your opportunity that you are presenting to yourself in not creating the judgment upon the choice that other individuals are engaging within their focus, understanding that they may hold dissatisfaction with their own creation and you may hold dissatisfaction with their creation also, but you are not creating their reality. They are creating their reality, and they are creating it in the manner that is the most beneficial to them within the now.

Therefore, your interaction engages a change, in offering yourself the opportunity to be interactive but to be accepting of their choice, recognizing that you may be helpful to them in the most efficient manner by being accepting of yourself, for in being accepting of yourself, you also shall be noticing of your behavior and your responses, and as you are noticing of your own responses, you shall also notice each time you are placing a judgment upon another individual’s creation, be it good or bad. It matters not. They are equal in judgment.

Therefore, in continuing to draw yourself to these types of situations and expressions of other individuals, you allow yourself now to view them differently and to be interactive in approaching other individuals, NOT in judgment but merely in supportiveness, by offering the example of the straight little sapling.

You need not offer any other expression. You need not be directing. You need not be offering helpfulness in suggestion. You need not be assuming personal responsibility, but merely being expressive of your own acceptance of self and continuing within your own trust and your own direction, attending to self, and this shall project the straight little sapling, which shall be more helpful and supportive than any other expression that you may offer.” [session 404, May 26, 1999]

NATHAN: “… I’m wondering, are these people who are being affected – Hungary, this earthquake [in Turkey], (1) and the innocent women and children and people who are just coming into this life, particularly young ones – is it more a part of the bigger plan, or is it because there’s actually something in this life and they’re not choosing to walk into the light, and therefore, nature’s way is going to move energy in a different direction? Do you understand what I’m saying?

ELIAS: Now; let me explain to you in clarity.

You look to your earth and you separate. You express the terms, ‘This is nature’s way. Nature is compensating.’ Or, ‘Nature is creating something independent of you. Your planets are moving into expressions of alignments. This is your universe. This is outside of you.’ These are belief systems!

I express to you, your planet and your universe is responding to your energy that you are projecting collectively.

Therefore, as you all are moving into more of an objective awareness and you are lending energy to this shift in consciousness and it is gaining momentum – and within this particular time framework of this year, as I have expressed, the energy is expressed very intensely – this is energy that you all collectively are projecting, and elements within your universe and within your planet are responding to your directions.

Therefore, this earthquake has occurred as a direction that is projected by the energy of all of the individuals within that location that participate in a collective expression. THEY have created this, not vice versa.

In this, it is a choice individually of many, many individuals to be disengaging. Many other individuals choose to be disengaging in other manners which you term to be, within the identifications of your belief systems, violence. What I am expressing to you is that these are responses that individuals are choosing in conjunction with the movement of this shift in consciousness. It is VERY INTENSE in its expression of energy.

Some individuals choose to be disengaging, and in your terms, in the ‘big picture,’ in the expression of this shift in consciousness, they lend energy to the accomplishment of this shift in consciousness, for they are dispersing energy and they are also creating an expression which brings to all of your attention movement that is occurring.

You shall be noticing that this sparks great debates within individuals! Some individuals view these [events] as signs of the end of your times. Some individuals view these events as signs of great beginnings. It is all movement that you have all created collectively in response to this energy of this shift in consciousness and to the belief systems that are being addressed.

As your time framework progresses, more and more energy is projected into these waves in consciousness and addressing to all of these belief systems, for this is the point, to be accepting these belief systems, recognizing that they hold limitations with you and also recognizing that as you are opening your awarenesses – as you objectively are allowing yourselves wider awareness of all of your reality and eliminating your obstacles and your limitations and actualizing all of your abilities – you also are, individually and en masse, reacting.

You are being offered within yourselves great freedoms, but these freedoms are confusing and they are very unfamiliar, and therefore, individuals create a natural movement in retreat into the familiar, and they hold very tightly to their familiar expressions and behaviors and they express in extreme lack of tolerance – lack of acceptance within self and within each other.

Now; in this, as I have expressed, some individuals are not experiencing conflict. Now; within your societies and within your exchange of communications, those individuals, even collectively, that are not experiencing conflict and are channeling this tremendous expression of energy into an ease and calm and acceptance are not afforded within your society the recognition objectively that is afforded to the expressions of devastation and violence, for this is the familiar. The ease is unfamiliar.

NATHAN: Because we’re so used to having conflict happen.

ELIAS: Correct, and this attains your attention. You pay attention to conflict, but you do not pay as much attention to pleasure!

But in this expression, regardless that your societies are [not] objectively affording recognition to these expressions of ease and acceptance, it IS occurring en masse and many individuals ARE experiencing that avenue of channeling energy, and in that, you all afford yourselves the opportunity to exchange.

In this, those individuals that are channeling this energy into an ease and a lack of conflict are encountering many individuals that are experiencing conflict.

But through our observance, what do we view but the expression of these individuals that are experiencing the ease in confusion, and expressing objectively to each other amazement and elements of confusion that they themselves may not necessarily be experiencing this conflict, but it appears to them that many individuals that surround them ARE experiencing conflict.

And you each sit quietly, within your lack of conflict and your expressions of acceptance, and watch the rage of conflict that occurs about you. (Smiling)

Now; in this is your opportunity, for why shall it be that you draw to yourselves and you present yourselves with all of this rage and conflict that surrounds you? Why shall you not necessarily be drawing to yourself masses of individuals that are also experiencing this ease and not be encountering those individuals that are experiencing....

NATHAN: Like attracts like, that sort of belief? Like attracts like, and those are the people that you would find yourself being around, but what you’re saying is....

ELIAS: Within your belief systems, this would be the natural course of action, would it not?

NATHAN: Yes.

ELIAS: But you are not drawing this to yourselves, are you? You are drawing to yourselves some individuals that are ‘like attracts like,’ but you are also drawing to yourselves many individuals that are experiencing an extreme difference, and do you question to yourself why you shall draw to yourself all of these expressions about you that are so very different?

I shall express to you that the reason that you draw this to yourselves is [to be] offering you the opportunity to be the little sapling and to be lending energy to all of these individuals that are experiencing conflict, to be easing this conflict.

Individuals throughout the engagement of these sessions, from the onset of this forum, have been inquiring to myself, ‘What shall I do to be helpful in the action of this shift?’ I have offered for much time framework, ‘Turn your attention to self and be accepting of self first, before you are moving into expressions of helpfulness to other individuals.’

Within this now, you HAVE turned your attention to self. You HAVE afforded yourselves much assimilation of much information.

You have allowed yourselves, individually and collectively, much expression of acceptance, much movement within the addressing to your individual belief systems, and NOW you may begin to project your helpfulness outwardly to other individuals, not necessarily in the manner of offering a ‘thing’ to another individual, or a solution, but in your recognition of self and your acceptance of self.

You may BE the example now of the straight little sapling, and offer that energy of helpfulness to all of these individuals that ARE experiencing tremendous conflict and trauma.

NATHAN: I think one of the biggest things I’ve learned is, let them ask you the question. When I was learning all this information, I felt like I needed to express it to everyone – how come everyone else isn’t remembering this? But now I’m learning that they’re coming to me. They will come to you and ask you the questions, and you present them only what they ask, and that’s been a big lesson for me ‘cause I feel like maybe I can just say too much and turn them off and they never even go back to it again, and you don’t want to do that.

ELIAS: It is the acknowledgment that you each hold differences in perception – you all hold differences and this is not wrong or bad – and the acceptance of those differences, recognizing that each individual creates their reality in the most beneficial manner for themselves, and you create your reality in the most beneficial manner for yourself, and your method may be quite different from another individual’s method, but this does not create the definition that your method is better.

NATHAN: Because we’re all going to the same place essentially.

ELIAS: Correct, and this is the awareness that many of you now are allowing yourselves in objective terms; not merely subjective knowing, but you are moving into the expression of the reality of acceptance; not merely expressing within your language to each other, ‘I am so very accepting, I am so very accepting,’ but within your behaviors, within your actions, and within your offerings, you are creating a reality of acceptance, which is an entirely different matter!” [session 454, August 24, 1999]

MARGOT: “... we’re going to soon be out of time. But another sensation I got or impression I got – that I just refused to accept over and over again and yet it was just always there – has to do with a very dear friend who has been very ill. The situation that she’s going through has been on my mind a great deal for some time, and it was especially on my mind during the time that we were doing the actual movement into the new place (2), and the impression that kept coming over me so strongly, if I put it into words, would be, ‘I’m doing this for my friend.’ And this just seemed insane to me, that I would be getting this sort of a sense, because I couldn’t figure it out. It just didn’t mean anything to me at all, except that it was there. Why should that have been such a strong sense with me?

ELIAS: For what you are offering to yourself is information through the communication of impressions translated into thoughts in what you may identify as a personal manner. In other terms, what you have offered to yourself in communication is in relation to this shift.

All that you are creating and participating within and allowing yourself to recognize and notice, move through, accept, and experience is in actuality lending energy to the insertion of this shift and the lessening of trauma.

Therefore, what I am expressing to you is that the reason you have associated in this manner, that you are ‘doing this for your friend,’ is not necessarily that you are creating any particular action specifically to be individually helpful to this one individual, but that you are being helpful, in a manner of speaking, to this individual and to all individuals in the action of the sapling.

The sapling may not necessarily grow, in your physical terms, throughout its duration as a little tree without any growing pains, but it is not concerning itself with all that is occurring outside of itself.

It is accepting of its growth. It is recognizing and noticing of its movement, of its creations, and in that, it is not attempting to be instructive or even helpful to any other little sapling.

But in its action of concentrating its attention within self and its own movement, it IS being helpful, as example to other saplings.

In this, you are not merely creating an action of example. You are also creating an action of ease, for each experience that any of you engages within the action of this shift, in diverting the creation of trauma within your individual focus and moving into the expression of altering or turning your perceptions to be avoiding trauma, lends to the expression of the whole.” [session 600, April 09, 2000]

MERRILL: “It seems to me that every major choice that I have made in this focus has drawn me into another teaching experience, and to me the information that you present in these sessions is so fantastically important that I am compelled to study it and try to completely comprehend it and experience it.

In view of my draw toward teaching, I wonder if someday I might hold the knowledge and experience that I might help others assimilate this information. How could this be accomplished most effectively? And should I follow some particular path, or is it sufficient to just be the straight little sapling and make myself available to answer questions and interact with others? Is there some such particular role in all this for me? I am interacting now with a few people as pen pals around the Elias materials. Would you comment on that?

ELIAS: Very well. I will express to you, my friend, that this is the nature of redefining terms in relation to this shift in consciousness, and therefore also redefining your reality.

For the term of ‘teaching’ within your reality is being redefined as you widen your awareness, and you recognize that you are not teaching, and other individuals, or yourself, are not learning. You are travelers, and you are sharing. You are dropping the veils of separation, you are turning your attention to self, and you are moving into the expression of genuinely becoming the straight sapling, and therefore offering an expression of example and a vulnerability or OPENNESS to be interactive with other individuals but holding your attention upon self naturally, and this offers a beneficial expression to other individuals. This is the nature of acceptance.

For as you redefine your terms and your reality, you recognize that the expression of teaching, so to speak, is that which implies that there are individuals or essences that hold more knowledge than others, and this is incorrect; or that there are individuals or essences that are set apart or greater than others, and this also is incorrect. It also implies that the learner is less than, and this once again is incorrect.

Now; this is not to say that you do not share information, knowledge, and experiences with each other, for you do. And in that sharing, you offer energy to each other in widening your awarenesses. You share experiences and information to be allowing yourselves and others a greater exploration of your physical dimension and an expansion of your participation within it.

Now; in this, you may also view the analogy of the straight little sapling. It is not isolated unto itself only. As you allow yourself to visualize a sapling, saplings grow upon your earth in proximity to other trees, for there is no creation of a sapling independent of other trees. For in your terms, the sapling is born of other trees; there is no separation. Therefore, also, there is interaction, in a manner of speaking. It may not be expressed in the same manner that you interact with other individuals, for your species are created differently, but there is interaction. The sapling interacts, but it grows without instruction and without instructing.” [session 860, July 03, 2001]

AILI: “You told me earlier that we were in a transformation. I’m realizing that after 25 years in the field of education that I need to go and move on and express myself in other ways, that I have expressed myself as much as I choose at this point to express myself, and I think in some ways it’s an alignment with what we’ve been talking about. My second question is this: what attitude must I hold in order to increase my service to others through my private practice, workshops and presentations, upon my leaving education this year?

ELIAS: (Softly) Be the straight little sapling, my friend.

AILI: Help me with that. I’m not quite clear I understand it.

ELIAS: I have offered a small story nearing the onset of this phenomenon. In this, I have presented a story of two little saplings. One is a straight little sapling, and it merely is. It grows, and it radiates, and it merely is within its being. It accepts itself, it trusts itself, and it expresses no need to be creating any other expression but its mere being.

Alongside of this straight little sapling is a quite convoluted little sapling, and this convoluted little sapling is continuously questioning its existence. It is continuously analyzing and questioning how it shall grow, in what direction it shall grow, whether it shall be incorporating too much water or too much sun, whether it shall be more beneficial to it to grow within the darkness and the moonlight or whether it shall facilitate its growth more within the sunlight. As it continues to question itself, it twists and becomes more and more convoluted, and all the while the straight little sapling merely continues to grow in its natural expression. In this, the convoluted little sapling notices the straight little sapling, and it questions how this straight little sapling is not bending itself and is not incorporating conflict and is merely radiating.

The straight little sapling offers no advice; it offers no bending to the convoluted little sapling. It merely continues to be. And in its being, the convoluted little sapling views it and expresses to itself, ‘Ah, perhaps if I am incorporating like action to this little sapling, I may incorporate no more conflict.’ It shall straighten itself. The greatest offering that the straight little sapling expresses is to merely be, for it offers an example.” [session 937, October 27, 2001]


Exercises: see also the no-conflict game.


End Notes:

(1) Paul’s note: Nathan refers to the major earthquake, measuring 7.5 on the Richter Scale, that occurred in western Turkey on August 17, 1999. The epicenter was located close to the city of Izmit, some 65 miles east of Istanbul. There was major damage to buildings, infrastructure and industrial plants, with more than 17,000 killed and many more injured. The earthquake was followed by a wave of aftershocks, some of them above 4 on the Richter Scale.

He also refers to flooding that occurred in Hungary during July 1999 that affected 30,000 inhabitants in 9000 homes. On July 15, 1999, 20 houses were destroyed and more than 800 severely damaged. In addition, the soil layers, that had already been wetted up and saturated with water due to the long wet period, caused falls and landslides. The electric power, potable water and telephone services were also partially interrupted.

(2) Paul’s note: Margot and Howard recently moved to a new home in Flagstaff, Arizona.

Digests – see also: | accepting self | being in the now | belief systems; an overview | choices/agreements | disengage (“death”) | duplicity | effortlessness | essence; an overview | focus of essence; an overview | forum | fun & pleasure! | hamster wheel | impulses | information | noticing self | objective/subjective awareness | perception | personal invalidation | probabilities | separation | sexuality; gender, orientation, and preference | shift in consciousness | shrines | time frameworks | trusting self | waves in consciousness | you create your reality |

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