Elias Exercises – appreciate yourself

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appreciate yourself

ALICIA: “I’m Alicia/Tisara. I have been, I think, opposing myself a LOT lately. I wasn’t at the New Orleans session but I read the transcript, and what became clear to me about myself is that I fear myself and I also irritate myself. I’m really struggling right now trying to pay attention to myself, but I’m not doing a very good job...

ELIAS: Stop! Acknowledge.

ALICIA: What I just did? I discounted myself. Well, I know that I do that, but I do it anyway!

I feel like in the last six months I have presented myself with really harsh imagery. Right now I’m really feeling financially destitute. I don’t like my job. My kids are constantly screaming and yelling and fighting with each other. I don’t feel like I’m moving in the direction that I want to be. I feel like I have all these lacks. The kicker is that I’ve been trying to have sessions with you since March and I think that I’m opposing them, which I don’t understand, and I get really angry with myself.

My question is, can you clarify or help me clarify what I’ve been doing these last few months that seem to me to be harsh and frustrating?

ELIAS: Yes. You are generating considerable opposition with yourself and with your environment and with most of what you create. In that opposition with yourself, you are not allowing yourself any expression of appreciation. You are merely continuing to reinforce a discounting of yourself, which moves in an extreme to the point in which you do not deserve to be engaging conversation with myself – within YOUR perception – for you are undeserving of much of anything in this time framework, for all that you do appears to fail.

Let me express to you, my friend, first of all I shall offer to you a simple exercise that I am instructing of you to be incorporating within a time framework of two of your weeks. In this, within each day you shall express in different moments three different elements of yourself that you appreciate.

ALICIA: (Softly) That’s tough. Here’s the opposing part, that I can feel myself resisting it...

ELIAS: Yes!

ALICIA: ...and I don’t want to resist it!

ELIAS: I am aware. But do not attempt to oppose further in opposing the opposition! Acknowledge that this is what you are experiencing and allow yourself to note that. It is not a matter now of attempting to change that. It has become too familiar and too extreme. Therefore, engaging the exercise shall interrupt that automatic discounting of yourself that is continuously occurring. In interrupting that, it creates a different type of energy.

I may express to you, at the closing of one of your weeks you shall be noticing different, and you shall be experiencing different and expressing different. But continue the exercise regardless, for that reinforces your acknowledgment of yourself and generates it into much more of a familiarity.

In the moments that you notice yourself opposing, which is frequently, do not attempt to push away; merely acknowledge that that is what you are expressing. Attempting to eliminate or push away reinforces, and reinforces your discounting of yourself.

ALICIA: Let me give you an example, I think, of what you’re saying. Let’s say that I’m working at thinking of three things that I appreciate about myself in the day. I’ll say something to myself like I think I appreciate the fact that I was better organized. Then I’ll feel myself saying that’s so stupid! So what you’re saying is when I do that, don’t say that it’s stupid that you think that it’s stupid.

ELIAS: Yes, yes.

ALICIA: I’m just noticing that I said it’s stupid, so it’s out there but I’m doing this anyway.

ELIAS: Yes, and release, yes. For that also is a release of energy and allows you to move eventually more easily in that appreciation and acknowledge it and not automatically discount your own appreciation. Initially that may occur, but eventually you shall present to yourself enough expression of appreciation that you shall notice you are not automatically expressing to yourself ‘oh, that is stupid’ or ‘that is not a good enough appreciation.’

It matters not what the appreciation is. It can be that you appreciate the shoes that you are wearing this moment. It can be that you appreciate the shape of your fingernails. It can be ANY expression of appreciation; it matters not. (Strongly) That automatically changes your energy. You may be opposing in the next moment, but in the moment that you are expressing that genuine appreciation, you cannot be opposing.

ALICIA: Even if I’m discounting it as I say that appreciation to myself? Even if I try to take it away in the next step, it’s still out there?

ELIAS: Correct. You have already expressed a different energy. Even if within the next moment you return and continue to express the familiar energy, it matters not. The point is that you have interrupted it momentarily and you are offering yourself the experience of interrupting it, and that becomes more familiar and it becomes more powerful as you continue to do it.

ALICIA: Are there reasons why in the last six months out of my 49 years I’ve been in such intense opposition with myself?

ELIAS: And what is your assessment?

ALICIA: There must be a reason...

ELIAS: What have you noticed?

ALICIA: What have I noticed in terms of what?

ELIAS: Of yourself.

ALICIA: I could tell you I don’t notice enough about myself, but that’s discounting!

ELIAS: What is changing? How are you assessing yourself to this point differently?

ALICIA: I’m not sure I am, but I must be. But that’s where I don’t notice. I’m not paying attention to something.

ELIAS: In actuality, in similarity to many, many, many individuals, you are not paying attention to many aspects. In this, there are underlying issues and beliefs that are being expressed somewhat subtly but in some overt manners also. [It is] merely a question of paying attention and recognizing what they are associated with.

In this point in your focus, one element concerns age. One element concerns age in relation to accomplishment – what has or has not been accomplished. One element in association with age concerns generating what YOU want rather than acquiescing to what other individuals want and generating a perception that that is nearly impossible, not wanting to participate in demands but perceiving that it is almost necessary, NOT SEEING YOUR FREEDOM, moving to a crossroad within your focus in your experience and standing upon that crossroad and being unsure of which way to move, somewhat knowing what you wish you could do but not acknowledging that you actually incorporate the strength and the power and the ability to do it and accomplish.

Concentrate upon this exercise first, and we shall be discussing. For this is significant that you allow yourself this exercise to interrupt that movement and initially offer yourself some expression of ease, some expression of acknowledgment to not be generating this intensity of agitation, which is difficult to penetrate.

ALICIA: Thank you.

ELIAS: You are welcome. One more question and we shall break.

GEORGE: I have a general question regarding this – I’m George, focus of Gregor – that if we do this exercise that you just suggested, that in general if you’re doing things they become more familiar. As they become more familiar, they become more powerful, actually.

ELIAS: Yes.

GEORGE: So this would be useful for anyone...

ELIAS: Yes.

GEORGE: ...to engage in to develop a more powerful sense of appreciation.

ELIAS: Yes. I may express to you, appreciation generates one of the MOST POWERFUL expressions of energy that you can generate. It may be rivaled merely by an intensity of fear, an extreme of fear. But as many of you may be aware within your experiences, fear can be a POWERFUL expression of energy and it can create powerful expressions and destructive expressions, and can be expressed to such an extreme that you can even generate a physical manifestation of it. You can configure energy of fear into an actual physical being. That is how powerful that energy expression is. But appreciation is more powerful than fear.

GEORGE: Appreciation is, you might say, the antidote to fear. So if we deliberately chose to appreciate ourselves every day, at least three times a day, that will become much more powerful in our experience.

ELIAS: Yes.

GEORGE: Thank you.

ELIAS: You are quite welcome.” [session 1799, July 16, 2005]

Comments

ALICIA: “I want you know that I have been doing the exercise that you asked me to do.

ELIAS: Yes?

ALICIA: And I’m going to continue to do it. I remember you said don’t stop within a week, just do it for the fourteen days. I was joking to somebody that I might even to do it longer than fourteen days. I might get addicted to it. (Elias laughs) But what I noticed, which I thought was kind of interesting, is that I’m much more relaxed if at some point during the day, like if I do it in the morning when I first get up, I find I’m much more relaxed and I’m much less pushy with my energy and much less impatient.

ELIAS: Yes.

ALICIA: It’s been an issue of mine, so I guess what I’m seeing or realizing is that there is a connection between my not feeling deserving and my impatience about things. I had never made that connection before, so that was very interesting.

ELIAS: Congratulations.

ALICIA: I also thought that I would discount my appreciation, and I found that I didn’t. In fact, I write them down. I looked over the list of how many I had and went wow, yeah! But then I had an automatic response, which I am sure is not too unusual for anybody else, and it was 'stop being so conceited!' (Elias laughs) I think that it’s kind of drummed into our heads since we’re small that anytime we appreciate ourselves we find we are conceited. It’s something to overcome. But I will continue.

ELIAS: But as you continue to practice, that expression shall become less and less.

ALICIA: Yes. At least I noticed that it was an automatic response, so as you said, I just noticed it. I said, 'There it is.' I don’t try to do anything with it.

ELIAS: Yes.

ALICIA: ...There’s a part of me that likes to think that yes, I’m shifting, and yes, I’m making movement. But there’s another part of me that sometimes feels that I’ve been standing still. I wondered if that is sort of a reflection of my Sumafi belonging?

ELIAS: No. This is your association of being so very familiar with discounting yourself. You ARE generating movement. You ARE shifting. You are widening your awareness. But it is very familiar to you to discount yourself.

ALICIA: Yes, it is. I was going to title the discussion we had in March 'The Day I Quit Being My Own Worst Enemy.' (Elias chuckles) I think of myself as the queen of discounting, sometimes. It’s an incredibly powerful familiarity that I have. Is that just me and this focus I am presently viewing? Or is some of discounting a bleed through of other focuses?

ELIAS: Let me express to you, my friend, as I have to other individuals, whatever you chose and experience in this focus, if you are experiencing somewhat of an intensity of certain directions or experiences, you are also automatically drawing energy from other focuses that express similar. That is an action that you all incorporate.

What may be encouraging to you is that that action changes, and it changes in association with what you alter in your explorations and your experiences. Therefore, you may be generating new directions in which you are not discounting of yourself and you are acknowledging yourself, and you shall draw THAT type of energy from other focuses also.

This is the reason that this exercise that I express to you is important, to be interrupting that familiarity and that pattern of discounting yourself so frequently. This allows you to introduce a new energy to yourself, a new direction. In practicing that, you become more familiar with that, and the discounting shall eventually become less and less. In that lessening, it shall also become less familiar.” [session 1807, July 23, 2005]

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