ANAIYAH: Hello, my friend.
JACKLINE: Oh, hello.
ANAIYAH: How are you?
JACKLINE: Well, I’m happy to be here.
ANAIYAH: So soon.
JACKLINE: I know, I know. I just, I’m just, everything is a question.
ANAIYAH: Which one do you want to explore today?
JACKLINE: Well, there… one question… and this is all about choices and about recognizing energy and making choices. But the first question… I want to say it’s simple… none of it is….it’s simple but it’s not simple. Okay, so I’m going to say that I would like to be more aware of what I’m choosing and what might be best, even though I know whatever I choose is best, because I’m going to gain something from it. So there’s no… no wrong. But I’d like also to be able to explore aspects of myself and how I might go… choose one or the other for exploring. And then, and this is the simple question here, what I’m saying. The next one is complicated, but this…this part of the question, how can I be more aware of what I’m choosing and what’s best. This came from something Jib said at our Perception Group. He said, Well, he goes to pick up his coffee, and then he spills it, or he goes to serve food, and it drops.
So, the other part of this question, and it’s separate but… What’s happening when I intend to do something… I intend to pick my coffee, and then a different action occurs, like I trip and I fall. I not necessarily get hurt, but it just happens, or I spill my coffee, or I forget what I’m going to say. Now, if I were answering that question, I would say, Well what would Anaiyah tell me? Anaiyah would tell me, Well, isn’t it wonderful to have surprises!?! (both laugh) Isn’t it wonderful to have the unexpected come and have an opportunity to respond to that!?! But if there’s a cause-effect, effect-cause of energy, something really is happening when I intend to do something and a different action occurs. So my question doesn’t relate so much to this.,, the fun of the surprise, or the fun of seeing me react in a not so happy way or a happy way to the surprise, but why does that happen? Even little, little things… I… you know, I drip water on my shirt or I drip coffee on myself or something?
ANAIYAH: This is a matter of attention.
JACKLINE: Ah.
ANAIYAH: What you pay attention to and what you don’t pay attention to. Because you express energy in different ways and different qualities. And sometimes you pay attention to some aspects of what you are doing or some aspects of the energy that you are projecting, but you don’t pay attention to the whole of it. And as you are fascinated or engrossed in these aspects that excite you or that (pause) make you feel good, you may not realize those other aspects. But for you in these moments, it’s a matter of bringing your attention back to yourself and your mundane self.
JACKLINE: (laughs) Well, I do tend to fly, fly around and float around and let the automatic actions do themselves without being present to them sometimes. Sometimes I’m quite present to them, but not, not always. So, that makes a lot of sense.
ANAIYAH: It is a matter of grounding yourself. Like you may be a kite, and you have that thread with which your grounded self keeps you connected to the ground. And sometimes when the kite flies too high, your grounded self pulls you back a little bit closer to the ground, so that you don’t go too close to the clouds or the lightning.
JACKLINE: But I like to go close to the clouds. I like to do that. Okay. No, you’re right. But what you say has just changed what my next question is going to be.
ANAIYAH: Ah, another surprise.
JACKLINE: A surprise, because just this morning I wrote down this flood of questions that I was going to leave for the future, because it’s important that I understand aspects of myself and choices and the energy patterns. But this also, it’s sort of mundane a little metaphysical, but it relates. So I’m going to change going into things you said with Julie, but…
Okay. All of my life, all of my life, I’ve lived in, I would say two worlds. Floating, flying high, and being very attentive to the physical world, becoming street smart, learning how to manage money, learning how to manage details. And I’ve been, I’ve been able to use the world of beauty when I was uncomfortable, or had trauma, or I’ve been able to go back and forth. But… and they’ve been separate, and I’d like to unify them; but in a way they have been.
And this is the new question. And I talk about this because it’s a tool to talk about. My belonging is Vold, and I just float around and fly, and my alignment is Sumafi, and I’m very structured and detail conscious, and they work so well for me. I have… one grounds me, and the other, it makes… I have a soft landing, is what I’ll call it, after I’m flying high. But in my astrological chart, I have four planets in Gemini, and they’re all, they’re closely conjunct. Sun, Moon, Saturn, and Uranus. And the Saturn and the Moon are one degree apart. And so my Moon, whenever I feel emotional that Saturn just grounds me. And I have had this good fortune to be able to balance, to be able to balance and have these opposites support each other. And so the question I wrote really isn’t so much the question I have.
The question I wrote is how much effect on our focus is the time of our birth? Because we have preferences and propensities and aspects that are part of this focus. And we can expand and learn, but there’s still values. So…now I’m going to take that question and bring it into this living in two worlds, because you mentioned grounding. And I do have good grounding. And I also have the ability to…I want to almost say leave my body and float into the non-physical, and talk to people who are dead and, and get succor from people who love me who are not even alive, and receive the ability… You’re there, but I have the good fortune to be able to receive what you share, what you offer. And I don’t know that everybody would, but for me it just, it just feeds me and touches me right where I need that inspiration in that moment. So, even though the question is how much of what I wrote, how much effect does the time of our birth have on our focus, that’s just a metaphysical question. I don’t care about the intellectuality about it. What I care about is using my, these influences, my preferences, my ability to fly and then have a soft landing. But I’d like not to… I’d like to incorporate them even more so that I don’t use the non-physical imagery as an escape, but I bring it into my life to mitigate fear, to take chances, to use the opportunities of this magnificent physical world and the abundance of it. I would like to use… I’d like to be unified in… in a non-physical way and receive it and not cling with fear to being grounded, and I can’t do this, or I’m afraid to do that. So, that’s how I want to relate to choices and energy in this question.
ANAIYAH: It is a long exposure, and this question that you have, the answer is simple. It’s a matter of choice. Just as you said, you wanted to talk about choices. Let me use a simple image for you to help you understand about the separation that you perceive between these two aspects, these two worlds (pause) that it is like a part of your landscape.
At some point, you choose to build a fence between two parts of the same field. You cut it in half. And when you’re on one side of the field, you have the impression that it is separate or different from the other side of the field. And sometimes you have the impression that from this side of your field that you’re in, either you’re intellectual and organizing aspects, you cannot connect to or reach the more bubbly and creative and jumping jack aspect of you. But the fence is there because you’ve put it there. You choose to keep it there and keep these two halves of the same landscape as separate when they are not. If you remove the fence from the landscape, then your landscape is whole again, and you can move from one side to the other. There isn’t even two sides of the landscape anymore. This is how you choose to perceive yourself.
When you separate these aspects of yourself and make them different, when you learn to separate them because you have to be serious in one of these aspects, or you have to be childlike and spontaneous in the other, but these qualities can blend and merge together. You don’t have to separate them that much. The way you choose differently is simply by realizing that you have put a fence there that may be useful in some contexts or circumstances, but that the fence doesn’t have to be there all the time. That sometimes you can make it disappear. You can make it melt into your landscape, simply be another feature of your landscape and not the boundary. You can use that fence as an obstacle to jump over just like the sheep you count when you want to go to sleep. Or you can make it as a feature where birds can land and observe what’s around them. You can use that as a bug hotel also.
JACKLINE: As a what?
ANAIYAH: A bug hotel.
JACKLINE: Uh-huh.
ANAIYAH: Where the bugs are going to make their nests, or there are poles around which plants can grow and climb. It doesn’t have to be a boundary, as I said. Do you understand?
JACKLINE: Oh, I do. I do. Because in business, there are times where I do want that fence up so that I have a certain role that’s quite appropriate to that environment, and people will respond much more comfortably with behavior from one side of the fence. But I know I can make a fence invisible. It can be a solid… All I have to do is say, okay, disappear, disappear.
ANAIYAH: Exactly.
JACKLINE: So, it might be appropriate to have that visualization sometimes.
ANAIYAH: And you can choose any visual that you prefer in that moment. You don’t need to use the fence. You can use whatever fits.
JACKLINE: No, the fence is quite nice, a good visual. But I don’t know what it would be…I would know what it’s like to go back and forth freely. But I don’t know about the blending. Because, ohh, and I think my hesitation is that so much of the grounding part of the landscape has an element of fear or hesitation or, Oh, I can’t do that, or, I’m afraid to do that, or I’ll trip and fall, and it won’t be successful. That unless I’m more aware of that and choose something other than that, not feed the fear, so to speak, the two of them won’t be able to go back and forth as easily. Does that make sense?
ANAIYAH: Yes. And it’s not necessarily a matter of back and forth, but realizing what that aspect is bringing you. It is there to bring you a sense of safety and stability, that grounding element, and you don’t need to let go of it. You can still be aware of this grounding, of this earthy element that is bringing solidity and density to your experience. It is still an aspect that can be used when you fly around, so that you don’t dissolve into steam or a cloud.
You can at the same time expand and become as thin as mist, and at the same time or in a subsequent moment, contract and densify and become droplets of water in the atmosphere that will drop down towards the ground. You become rain, and then you get soaked into the ground and the earth and make these new experiences of being part of the ground. But the qualities exist even when you’re in that state of mist or gas. The gas has the ability or the possibility to be condensed and of becoming liquid or solid. The qualities are there. It is not a matter of getting rid of them, so that you can fly. You bring them with you, but you don’t use them in that moment.
JACKLINE: So in choosing aspects, going to… because…. and I’m reading what you said in Julie’s session. “Choice is simply being a certain version of yourself. And you can use these different aspects around you to move in the direction you want. And the power to do so is contained in the energy that is reflected to you. So pay attention to the subtle movements of energy.” So basically, what you just said, what I got from what you just said, is that I don’t have to separate the aspects. They can exist at the same time. And they can blend, or I can have one less active than the other. But still, while I’m flying, I’m still grounded to a degree.
ANAIYAH: The ground is still there.
JACKLINE: Yes.
ANAIYAH: But you choose to experience the flying and the air above the ground…
JACKLINE: So when I go on a trip when I time travel, I’m always aware of myself here in California. That hasn’t left. But the activity, the action, is on the trip. And who I am, or whether I’m invisible, or whether as Jackline or whether I’m in a particular body, I’m intensely aware of that. But anytime I want to feel grounded, I know and can compare and can feel Jackline in California.
ANAIYAH: Exactly, yes. You don’t need to disappear Jackline in California to project parts of your attention in these times and places that you visit. And this helps you feel more secure during these trips.
JACKLINE: Very much so, yes. Because the last time we talked, we talked about merging, and I was afraid that I would lose myself because it’s very easy for me to… I don’t know if the words empathize, but to want to be curious about another experience. And you said, and this was a surprise to me, but it shouldn’t have been, but it was…that we merge all the time. We’re blinking in and out. And I remember in my Gurdjieff teaching, we look at something and we identify with it. Our identity becomes for that moment what it is we’re attending to, what it is we’re looking at. And so I know that I’m identifying, I’m becoming in a way merging with what I’m looking at, but I want to have the aspect of myself that is Jackline wherever she’s at…that awareness of myself at the same time.
ANAIYAH: Merging and identify are not the same thing.
JACKLINE: Ahh.
ANAIYAH: You can merge and still identify as yourself, but experience the mergence, the blending of you and that other thing or element that you are experiencing. Or you can lose yourself in the experience and completely lose the sense of an identity in that experience. You don’t even identify with what you are experiencing. Or you can identify with certain aspects of your experience, certain aspects of yourself that you say are Jackline in California, while other aspects of you, you put in your shadow. You don’t necessarily want to express them or be aware of them. They are still aspects of you, but you don’t identify with them. When you see them, you perceive them as alien from you. So merging, you can merge without identifying, and you can identify also without merging, but both can be combined.
JACKLINE: Okay. The teaching that, I mean, for decades that I’ve been using, that Gurdjieff referred to as divided attention, basically it’s always whatever I’m looking at always have a sense of my presence, of being there, of existing. And so I’ve always had that. I’ve worked on that for a long time. I’m not perfect at it, and I lose myself, but that’s probably the most important thing to me, to be aware that I am…whatever I’m looking at.
But you said something about not recognizing certain aspects of myself or putting them in the shadow and thinking that they belong to something else. So what you just said made me realize that what I’m looking at with curiosity or surprise or whatever, there’s a part of that experience that may be looking at something else, but also seeing myself in that experience, and maybe recognizing it, maybe not. So then the question comes up about, well, what are the aspects of myself? I don’t know. I’m aware that I am, and I’m aware of coming from something enormous and being a part of something absolutely magnificent and so big that I can’t even comprehend it. But there are aspects of myself that I don’t even know are there.
And so in making these choices, how do I know? There’s the one that likes to be playful and giddy and silly, and there’s the one that’s very serious and detailed. I’m a programmer, a computer programmer. I like to make sure everything’s just orderly and in place and according to schedule. I’m an artist, and I see… and this I could from the time I was a child, see moving colors everywhere, moving colors, blending back and forth. So I’m aware of some aspects of myself.
ANAIYAH: Let me ask you a question. What do you think are aspects?
JACKLINE: Preferences. Values. I don’t know, other than… that’s what I think, but I don’t know.
ANAIYAH: Very well. These, those are aspects of you that some are part of your identity, of your natural expression in this focus, and some are learned or influenced by your societies, your communities, your experiences. You have acquired them and identified with them. You believe they are part of who you are when they aren’t necessarily. While there are some aspects of you that you have hidden, but they are indeed aspects of you naturally.
When you employ the word aspect, your body is an aspect of you. It is comprised of aspects like your skin, the smoothness of your skin, the vitality of your metabolism, your organs. They are aspects of you also, and they interact together. They allow you to engage with your world, the world that you’re expressing also. And they are influenced by the non-physical aspects of yourself, such as the ones you described, the grounded, the organizing, the love of beauty, the nonsensical element, also. Those are all aspects of you.
You may have a melancholy aspect also, even though you may not necessarily choose to experience it all the time. You may have one such perspective of yourself that you choose to express with some landscapes or some… or while you are listening to certain songs that bring out these elements of yourself that may connect to other focuses that are experiencing these circumstances. Your other focuses are aspects of yourself. Your neighbors reflect also aspects of your personality. Some of them are explosive, powerful. And you don’t understand them, because you’ve been taught to refrain [from using] this power and this exuberance.
And so they appear, and they are filtered by judgment and should-nots. And they become bad and uncomfortable. But these bursts of energy are natural. They are just like your lightnings and your storms. They are not bad. They are just conditions in your environment, and they generate certain chemical reactions with your atmosphere and with your plants and grounds. They express also the held energies that the collective express.
JACKLINE: How do emotion… Well, one comment. I had a conversation with someone where I was very intense and powerful. And I said to you privately, Anaiyah, should I have done that? And you said, Fury is good. And I thought, oh my God, Fury is good. There’s a part of me that has fury and needed to express it. You know, not even in a judgmental way, but a forceful way. But my question is related to emotions because some of these aspects that you are describing as aspects have emotional content associated with them.
And I’m really careful not to follow the emotions. And it’s easier for me being thought focused to kind of look at it and evaluate it and not follow it. But some of these expressions come out with a force of emotion, and I’m wondering, is that conscious? Or is there a choice that is a conscious choice, or is it just an unconscious choice? Because I am very careful about being conscious when there is a force expressed.
ANAIYAH: There is a difference between expressing your emotion and following your emotion. Emotions are energy, communications from yourself to yourself, and the signals of these emotions need to go out and be expressed in your world. They are just like sadness. It can be expressed through crying, through an experience of depression.
And I’m not talking about the morbid state of depression when it becomes chronic. I’m talking about depression just as in your atmosphere when there is less pressure. There is suddenly the experience of a void.
Then when these like sadness or joy or anger are expressed, you don’t necessarily follow them. Following the emotion will nourish them, just like putting more logs into your fire or throwing alcohol or oil on your fire. It will just intensify it and make it burn stronger, harder, seek more fuel to consume. This is following emotions. When the emotions are allowed to be expressed, they don’t continue.
It’s just like your voice or the note when you hit the key of a piano. If you hit the key once, the note will ring and then fade away. If you keep hitting the note or the key, it will repeat and repeat and repeat. This is following emotions. You continue to engage whatever you are doing or feed it with thoughts and scenarios that you imagine. But when you allow the emotion to be what it is, once it is expressed, it has fulfilled its function to catch your attention.
Expressing anger is not necessarily [shouting] at someone. It can be just experiencing that energy expand, and rise, and burn, and then leave you. This is how you express anger. You can use a physical action to do that like shouting, but you don’t have to direct it to another person, (pause) if you don’t want to harm them, because you fear the power of anger. But anger is merely a signal to you that you are blocking yourself out.
JACKLINE: Blocking myself out in what way? Not that there’s an aspect of myself that needs to be expressed?
ANAIYAH: You are… you have removed all exits, so to speak. You have pushed yourself in a corner and you can’t escape.
JACKLINE: Okay.
ANAIYAH: Do you understand the difference?
JACKLINE: Yes. Yes. So all of these aspects of oneself, of myself, are valid, and I can choose when to express them.
ANAIYAH: Yes.
JACKLINE: But sometimes they come up by themselves. I don’t mean… sometimes… and they may come up with an emotion or a preference, but it’s my choice.
ANAIYAH: They don’t come up by themselves. It’s just like your notes on your keyboard. If you don’t pay attention to what you’re doing with your hands or your body, you may generate notes that you don’t want to generate. But you are doing something that triggers the notes.
JACKLINE: Okay. So I do something and that creates a reflection. That creates energy that’s outside of me, and I respond to that. My aspect is activated. And I can pay attention to what’s happening out there, and then choose to express or not an aspect in a particular moment, or choose when to express that. Is that what we’re talking about?
ANAIYAH: The choosing is the expression of the aspect. It is not the mind that chooses. It is not the intellect…
JACKLINE: So if I’m not paying attention to something. Okay. Okay. I can be paying attention. I can be aware of myself. Or I cannot be less aware of myself. But all of those are choosing expression of some part of me.
ANAIYAH: Yes.
JACKLINE: And then when I see that, I see that expression, and then I’m aware that I have done something to create that aspect to be activated. Am I understanding?
ANAIYAH: Yes. And when you have the impression that they are expressed on their own, it is because you have put that fence between you and that aspect, and you don’t recognize them as you, so you don’t know when you are expressing them. But you are expressing them. You just, in that moment, you are not recognizing them as you. And you have put yourself sideways in relation to that particular aspect that you have the impression that it’s expressing on its own. And if you continue to perceive yourself as removed from it, or if you continue to perceive it as removed from yourself, you won’t be able to choose objectively or intentionally when to express it and when not to express it.
JACKLINE: Okay.This entirety of this topic of aspects and choice and using energy to me is enormous. I already look and try to attend, be aware that every moment every moment I’m creating whatever reflection I see. So, that…that was life-changing. But this is life-changing also, because I’m not just looking at the reflection to say, What is this offering me? What is I want from it? But I’m looking at myself to see what aspect, what subtle physical or emotional or preferential part of me wanted this to happen? So that if I become aware of these aspects, I will be able to choose how I use my energy, how I use my creativity, how I create my world, because that part was the missing element.
ANAIYAH: Yes. And sometimes it’s not that an aspect wants to express. It can be that you have some held energy, and that the easiest way for you to express it or release it is to choose that particular action, that particular aspect. And you do the choosing with these inner aspects of yourself that you choose not to be aware of for your experience, or that you don’t know yet how to be aware of, but they are all part of that dance that you are doing. They are a breathing. You have learned to see them as unwanted or unacceptable, but all these judgments are like the fences we talked about earlier. They have been put there, but they don’t belong to the landscape unless you want to keep them there.
JACKLINE: You’re speaking of aspects of myself that I may have learned or constructs that I may believe are unaccepted, but they’re not, at least anymore, beneficial to me. Is that what we’re speaking of? Or are we speaking of hidden parts of me that I don’t… Well, it’s the same thing. I believe that I don’t want to see them. Ahh… So I have to…Ahh… Oh…A lot of attention to what’s going on. Wow. I have to play around with this, Anaiyah.
ANAIYAH: And that’s the best way to get acquainted with your aspects and with all the fences that have been put to separate them.
JACKLINE: Well, I’m aware of a lot of the constructs that I don’t want to have in my life anymore. I’ve let go of a lot of them. But the hidden ones that say this part of me is not acceptable. Yeah, you know, Maybe it is, huh?
ANAIYAH: And maybe it doesn’t need to be either acceptable or unacceptable. It just is. And there is no need for judgment.
JACKLINE: But we’re talking about the physical world, right? Not the non-physical. And I know I’m in the physical world, but it feels like I am so totally influenced and receiving energy from, not just other focus aspects of me, but a whole non-physical world of magnificence and freedom. And I feel I’m so connected to that.
ANAIYAH: And that is another of the fences. Seeing the separation between the physical and the non-physical. They are simply different aspects of the same.
JACKLINE: Well, I’m told… Elias says, that when we disengage and realize then that we’ve died, that we’re not in the physical anymore, that at a certain point we can choose not to let go of objective, I don’t want to say boundaries or whatever, to go through a transition of letting go of the objective. And to me, I’m in this physical world, but there is a part of me that is, that lives, that receives and experiences from a non-objective…
ANAIYAH: You are at the same time in the physical and the non-physical.
JACKLINE: I feel that.
ANAIYAH: Your body, your world is the expression of the non-physical energies. They are not separate. They are not one on one side and the other on another side.
JACKLINE: But non-physical still has the idea, the belief of things and separation. I’m talking about where there’s not even words, where there’s no separation. And I feel like I’m back and forth in that.
ANAIYAH: You can express experience less separation in your physical experience, as you know and as you have experienced.
JACKLINE: Yes.
ANAIYAH: And you don’t have to oppose them so much. They need one another.
JACKLINE: Okay.
ANAIYAH: The physical doesn’t exist without the non-physical.
JACKLINE: Okay. Well, this is enormous and wonderful. And I may be able to live here in my body in a world of color and moving and slight winds and musical sounds coming from the ethers at the same time.
ANAIYAH: Yes.
JACKLINE: So I have to practice that again. I think I did as a child. It was part of me then.
ANAIYAH: Yes. And we played together then.
JACKLINE: Oh, thank you. Thank you for that. So I’ve known you for a long time, I’m hearing.
ANAIYAH: Yes.
JACKLINE: Well, the beeper has rung or the music has sung. And I will take what you say to my heart and soul and attend to it. And I thank you so much.
ANAIYAH: You’re very welcome, my friend. My dear, dear friend. Don’t forget the song in your heart.
JACKLINE: Ohh, yes.
ANAIYAH: Until next time, I will be there and hum for you.
JACKLINE: Oh, yes. Thank you.
ANAIYAH: Ballads and melodies.JACKLINE: Thank you, Anaiyah.
ANAIYAH: You’re welcome. Have fun with your experimentations and your discovery of your aspects.
JACKLINE: Thank you.
ANAIYAH: Bye.
JACKLINE: Bye. Thank you.
