October 4, 1992

Samuel: Well, greetings, dears.

Greetings, Samuel.

S: So, some of you are sitting out there in the dark, eh? Do you like that? You don’t mind it? All right.

Very important month coming up, and I want to spend some time talking about it.

[To Eileen, who came up from Atlanta to teach a workshop called, “Death, the Greatest Adventure” on the day before this session:] Ah, you’re still here. Sweet soul, you are a gift. My gift was your workshop. I was so proud of you. “You did good, baby.” You’ll be back.

All right, gifts. Particularly a gift about—in honor of Eileen—goodness, this is going to sound strange. I want a gift about death.

Aye.

I’ve been modestly dying. I didn’t always realize it until about two or three days ago, when I went to her workshop, because I realized this was the time I could learn to let go easier. I’m not bothered by my opinions. They are sort of littering the way, and nothing—I don’t read anymore; it bores me. I can’t keep up the old game.

S: You’re in the midst of incredible transition, and all of the old satisfactions are changed. That’s death of the old, isn’t it? Let’s just make sure it doesn’t need to be death of the continual, also.

Aye. ‘Tis the master who sees what’s going on; ‘tis the student that says, “What, what, and what now?”

More. Aye.

I shared some of the things that Eileen taught yesterday with a co-worker whose father was dying a couple of weeks ago, a person who generally wouldn’t be receptive, or I didn’t think would be receptive, to the idea of helping a person make the transition and helping them let go, and actually telling them. And she said, of course her family wouldn’t have accepted that. And I told her right before she went to be with her father, who was dying. Then I went out of town, and a week later I came back, and he had died, and she said, “I used to think everything you said about these things was not true, and I used to think that you were really off the wall about things.” And she said, “It made me able to know what he was going through. His death was much more peaceful, and I was the one who was able to help the rest of my family deal with it.” And she said, “My grief was real, but even my grief was peaceful, because I understood where he was going.”

S: Aye. Has anybody here ever found that the information that you have learned by being off the wall has helped you or helped you help another? Aye. It’s amazing, isn’t it?

One more, then.

This has to do with the prize of letting go and accepting, which is also what this is about. As Eileen pointed out yesterday, it doesn’t have to be—the death process and the grieving process can be mixed with so many things in our lives. It doesn’t have to be just of the body or the physical self. So I experienced a very interesting thing in my life that was there to teach me. This seems kind of silly in comparison to everyone else’s, but I’m not making a joke here. It has to do with my cat, which performed a drama for me in order to teach me about process and letting go and acceptance.

I won’t talk much about what actually happened, but essentially it was a problem with the unity of my little cat family at home, and it was getting to where I might have actually had to find a home for one of them, because it was getting to be pretty serious. And I was very attached to what was going on, because this was my family that wasn’t working out here. This was part of my life that has become so ritualized with knowing the presence of these little creatures here, and everything being in harmony and unity that was so important to me.

Well, I did everything that I could. I searched in different ways out there in the world for what information I can do to help this situation. And my veterinarian gave me some information about—you know—he gave me some hormones and things like that, and I searched another way, and I was very anxious about it, and finally I got to the point where I realized, this is for me, this is to teach me . . . it’s a process, though, it’s their process. And I said, “Universe, I’m doing everything I can, everything I know how to do. I’ve searched out there, and there are a lot of choices, and I’ve tried them all. And this is what I’d like to happen, but I have no control over that, and I’m going to let go, and I’m going to accept that whatever happens happens, and I’ve done everything that I can.”

And that was such a big step for me, because I get so attached to my desires for an outcome that it’s hard for me to stand back and just let the process happen and be accepting of whatever happens.

And, as soon as I let go of that—it’s amazing how my little creatures, having taught me what I needed to learn, everything fell right back into place.

S: Thank you for making it an easy one. Good work.

Not so very long ago, at a very beautiful place in Kentucky, I had the opportunity to teach through a weekend about getting yourself out there—knowing what your gifts are—a bit of what we’ve talked about in these first Sundays. Knowing what your gifts are, what some of your abilities are about and, once having a feel for that, things you can do to get it out there, to get you out there. And at that particular weekend, one of the things that seemed to be particularly fitting, especially right now, was a particular subject that clearly did not have quite enough time given to it, so I’m going to take a bit of time this night, because it appears to be a subject so close to home that it bears repeating to those who have heard it and it bears teaching to those who are not familiar enough with it.

And the reason that I want to go in that particular direction this night is because of what has just passed and what is coming as far as your earth celebrations are concerned. What has just passed? Equinox. And what is equinox?

Balance.

S: That’s right. So is there anybody in here who, over the last few weeks, has not been noticing [a lesson] in a whole lot of experiences that could be boiled down to, “we’ve got to get balance going here?” One of the ways that you know that you’re working on the pathway is simply that you are in tune with the cycles of the earth. When the earth is working on balance, so are you, in your own version of it. Isn’t that handy?

What is the next holiday? Halloween. And what is that one about? What is coming up in your future. Tell me what that particular holiday is about.

It’s about death. It’s about honoring what’s gone before, different cultures, ancestors, whatever.

S: Well said. More to it than that. Anybody?

I thought traditionally it was the Celtic end of the year.

S: YES! Yes. Aye. It’s the New Year. Actually, the New Year is at the midpoint, but it seems to have been shuffled around to the end of October, but that’s all right.

Traditionally, and not simply in Celtic or Druidic cultures, but also in very many other cultures, this particular time, right now, is one part of it, by the way. Anybody know what holiday you’re moving in and a part of right now?

Yom Kippur.

S: Aye. Very good. The time of atonement, purification, cleansing, renewal, because you are going to be new. You are going to have a new year. Many of your cultures recognize this particular time as the true ending.

So what I want to talk a bit about tonight is completion, but I’m going to be talking about it in a backward sort of way. I’m talking about completion because most of you don’t have beginnings. That’s why you don’t have completions. And if anybody who was at the retreat is following me right now, why do you think I am going to say you don’t have beginnings? Because you’re procrastinating. So in order to be able to make best use of this time coming up, to best be able to allow what needs to come from you, to begin again to renew, to review, to re-create for the new year, to have the completion by which you judge yourself a success, you need beginnings. But you don’t have beginnings, because you procrastinate. You prefer dreaming to doing. That’s not so bad. You’re in a society in which there are few dreams, and a whole lot of doing that doesn’t have to do with dreaming or even thinking. But to balance, your dreams need “do.”

Let’s begin just a bit with “dream.” Sweet soul, you used to dream. Do you let yourself dream? And I’m not talking about when you go to sleep at night and you’ve not had too much garlic or beans and you’re able to sleep the whole night through. What am I talking about here?

Aspirations.

Visualization.

S: Aspirations, visualizations, hopes, wishes. Do you let yourself expand beyond your current version? How do you know? I’m asking.

You feel lighter; you don’t feel down. When you have an aspiration or a goal or a dream, it kind of lifts you up.

S: Colleen is saying that one of the things that happens is you just feel lighter. And although it could be very easily sloughed into the airy-fairy to say you feel lighter, the truth of it is, you do. You’re not so attached to the mundane when you let yourself dream. You’re setting goals—beautiful. That shows that you’re dreaming and your dream has feet. That’s another way.

How do you know that you’re dreaming?

You let go of your limitations, the ends of your abilities.

S: And, absolutely, that is working in to what I’m talking about. You let go of your limitations; you expand your abilities.

Right now think of something that you’re avoiding. Everybody has something—a letter, a confrontation, a piece of work—a task. Think of something that you need to do that you haven’t done yet. Now, if it is that it’s next on your schedule, that’s not what I’m talking about. I’m talking about the one that you’ve been needing to do that you haven’t done yet because you don’t want to. That one.

Is there anything like it you’ve ever done before? The answer is yes, and the answer is yes because [telling yourself you can’t do it] is enough like [doing] it. “I can’t do it” is the result of experience, either actually worked out or just thought through. If I tell Joel enough times, “You can’t do this; you’re not good at it. Don’t even try. It’s not worth the time. It’s not fun. It’s no good,” he will allow that to create a pathway in his brain, and with that pathway his mind doesn’t know the difference between having done it and knowing, “I can’t do this; I’m not good at this; it can’t be done; it isn’t fun,” having heard it to the point of believing it.

How many times has your psychologist found that it takes for you to see something and repeat it before you’ve got it. About nine times. However, since you tend to knock a third of them all out, multiply that nine by three to make sure that you’ve seen it or heard it. How many?

Twenty-seven.

S: Thank you. Somebody could do it, I knew. Twenty-seven times, then, for it to become a part of you. Now, that was just quickly tossed in there for those of you who quickly try something once and stop. For those of you who try two or three times and are convinced that you’re not any good at it. For those of you who believe that “I can’t, I won’t, I’m not enough” is the rule.

Every time that you say something out loud, you are getting it three times. Remind me why.

You think it, you say it, and you hear what you say.

S: You think what it is. You say it; you do the pathwork to form the words. And while you’re saying it, you are hearing it. For everything that you do, if I say to you, “You are a magnificent human being, so filled with love,” that you’re sitting there glowing, and Louise and Peggy are so filled with your auric glow as it spreads out around there, what comes back is, “[ironically] Right!”

But when you hear it enough from enough people, you start thinking, “You know, there must be something to it.” You have stopped yourself all of your life because you have been in agreement with the “should not,” the “won’t,” and not in agreement with the “can,” the “will,” adding to the process, multiplying the negativity, hearing it, then repeating it to your own self, agreeing with it, speaking it out.

You have empowered the “I cannot stretch beyond this moment and who I am,”—probably because it’s convenient; probably because it has kept you from failure. It is better to not try than to try and fail. Isn’t that one of your great statements? It is better never to have tried at all than to have tried and failed? You live it, so it must be.

So, this task that you’re putting off is somewhat like something attached to a “could not-should not-do not” in your life. If you can find what it is attached to and allow yourself then to move back two or three steps to see what was the situation then, is it anything like the one you’re in right now? Was it necessary then to slow down? You know my expression—when you were four years old, you needed to hold somebody’s hand when you crossed the street, but when you’re forty, it’s just not quite so necessary. But when you were four, it was ingrained into your darling little heads, “Don’t ever cross the street without a responsible adult holding your hand.” And that’s why, at forty, you’re still looking for a responsible adult.

Perhaps what was going on with you then doesn’t fit at all with who you are right now. Very often, procrastination is simply a matter of believing who you are now is who you were before, and therefore, what’s going to happen will happen in the same way. Therefore, the way you will respond will be in the same way. It would take a mathematician far greater than anybody here to come up with the odds on every situation, every nuance, being exactly the same, to allow you to behave exactly the same now as you did in your past.

So, what is it that is like this particular situation that is causing you to want to avoid it? What went on then? What surrounded that situation? Who was involved? How different is that from where it is right now? Fear of failure tends to be the greatest reason you choose not to act—fear that it just won’t work.

Therefore, one of the best exercises to give you for your life as a whole, to help eliminate procrastination, is for you to start challenging your physical self through exercise. Little did you know—”But Samuel, that’s what I’m procrastinating on.” There are few safer ways to stretch your limits, and when you do stretch it, you know it, don’t you? How do you know it? You ache; you’re sore. When you’re no longer aching and sore from stretching those limits, what have you told yourself? “I have increased. I’m stronger. I can do it.”

Consistency is the only thing that keeps you from believing you can do it. Did you hear that? Consistency meaning—and this gets a bit involved—the reason you’re not consistent is that you set up a premise too far beyond your beliefs. Therefore you’re not consistent with “I’m going to walk an hour every day” when in your life you don’t have five minutes to spare. But if you said, “I’m going to walk for three minutes,” and you did that three-minute walk consistently, the completion that that has given you, the gentle easy stretch beyond your personal “I can’t,” is going to give you the desire for five minutes, the challenge of seven. It’s not wrong to start slowly; it’s wrong to not start. But when you make your expectation greater than your belief system, you cannot be consistent with it. You fear failure because you don’t have the experience of success. You don’t have success because you don’t have consistency. You don’t have consistency . . . why? Because you don’t start.

Make it a small and easy step toward a goal, a small and easy step that you can repeat and repeat and repeat, twenty-seven times, until it has molded a pathway into your head that says, “I think I can, I think I can, I think I can—I can, I can, I can.”

Now, I want to turn this around just a bit. I want you to tell me why you believe other people procrastinate—not that you do, of course. What would be the sorts of things that cause one to procrastinate?

Stress.

Fear of failure.

Boredom.

Other things are more fun.

Not knowing.

S: Not enough information. Not knowing what to do.

Having so many things to do.

S: [You] have so many things to do; it’s not organized; it’s not prioritized. Aye.

Also I think, in regard to dreams, you’re slow to start because you’re breaking your security, your space where you are.

S: Don’t rock the boat. Aye. Afraid of too much change.

Procrastination is the result of not clearly knowing . . . and not knowing clearly. I’m not playing games with you—there’s a difference there. What’s the difference?

[Pause] DID ANYBODY GET IT? So what was it?

You know, I make these absolutely remarkable statements of wisdom, and I just know that you’re going to go, “Ha! Just what I needed.” And instead, you go, [shrugs his shoulders]. Come now, this isn’t hard stuff.

One is not really understanding or having experience or wisdom about it, and one is not understanding what it is all about in the first place.

S: All right, that works.

Convenient confusion.

S: I like that. “This life: convenient confusion.”

Maybe one is not knowing the answer and one is not knowing the question.

S: Oh, I like that. Good one.

You procrastinate because you don’t care. You don’t care to know; you don’t know enough to act, nor are you clear enough yourself to do anything about getting the knowledge that you need. You don’t care. The carrot to keep you as you are is greater than the carrot to act. The carrot that leads the donkey. You’re right, I did call you that. (It is not a stupid herd animal.)

What motivates you?

When last we were together, what did we talk about? [Pause] You’re really working to make me feel good, aren’t you? All right, I’ll pick up and entertain you a bit more, all right?

When last we were together, we talked about happiness, being happy, letting yourself be happy. We talked about when you’re happy, you’re doing your gifts. What motivates you is being happy. When you’re feeling whole, when you’re enjoying the process, you are motivated to do those things that feed you. You procrastinate against those things that don’t feed you.

It goes back to having a passion for something.

S: When you have a passion for something, you’re going to find a way to do it. But you know, one of the reasons that was brought up, why you procrastinate, was perhaps one of the biggest reasons: boredom—you’re not excited about what you’re doing. Perhaps it is a task that’s just repetitious work; it does not challenge you.

Gwendolyn is here, and Gwendolyn is the originator of one of my very favorite phrases. She, as many of you know, is an artist, and artistry is wonderful to have the end product of, but the process can be quite dull, especially if you are a sculptor. Gwendolyn, what did you need to learn to do?

[Gwen:] I needed to learn to love the process.

S: The only way that you learn to love the process is when you know what it’s for. When you are touched in to the big picture. If you are finding that you are not motivated at work, perhaps it is not because you don’t know what the project is going to do for the company; it’s because you don’t know what your work does for the consumer. It’s not because you’re unhappy with having a job—although some of you may be. It is that your job doesn’t seem to lead to something else. it’s boring to you; it’s not exciting. You don’t love the process because the process is so separate from any sort of personal success. You don’t have a bigger picture that shows you completion.

What can you do to get that? There are two things you can do: expand your focus or narrow your focus.

The toughest stuff comes in very simple packages, sweet souls. I’m not giving you baby food tonight.

Expanding your focus means finding out how what you’re doing affects the world that you live in. “Well, it kills a few more ducks.” If you find that’s the case, you’re going to find it to be extremely necessary for you to narrow your focus. If the nature of the work you do which supports you to be who you are—it’s very rare when the work supports who you are, isn’t it? That’s not to say that cannot happen, and I intend to spend next year working with you to make that happen.

Nonetheless . . . now why was that funny?

Is that a threat or a promise?

S: [Pause] Promise. I thought about it.

Where were we? How would you narrow a focus, and why would you do that?

To one part of the project, one piece of the picture.

S: Why would you choose to only see one piece?

So you’re not overwhelmed.

S: One reason. All right.

So that you can give it the attention that it needs for it to be a part of the bigger picture.

S: So that you can give it your very best and the attention it needs.

To limit yourself in order to stay more comfortable. Because you’re not wanting to expand, so you narrow your focus to be able to stay where you are.

S: I have a very dear friend. He is an engineer in a nuclear power plant, which he does not believe in. He wants to be a forest ranger. But the engineering work pays him a fortune, and he knows that, with a particular mind-set, the nature of using energy this way can actually be very beneficial. I am making no judgment here; I am simply using an example that isn’t too very close to your home. He doesn’t like the end product of what he does; it kills too many ducks. But who he is at this moment is not honored by moving out of this place. Who he is tomorrow, he may be able to move out of it; he may choose not to, and honor himself that way. It doesn’t make any difference. The point is, who he is right now needs that, just as you need to punch keys, and just as you need to challenge yourself by working with clay, and just as you need to deal with all of these outrageous, crazy people that . . . so.

So he has learned to move his focus in, to the nature of what he does, and he sees his task as a giver of love and a purveyor of quiet alternatives, because of the example of his life in a small environment. There is no dishonor in that; there is dishonor in making radical changes that you have no place to go with, that are stretched beyond what you believe yourself capable of moving into. There is dishonor in setting yourself up for failure by leaping too far too fast, when you don’t believe you can do it. If you cannot allow yourself to expand your focus—which of course is the ideal, to attach in to the bigger picture—then attach in to the smaller picture, and learn to love where you are in it.

All right. I don’t see Suzanne here, so Frank, let’s talk about piano, dear. You are going to be Beethoven, all right?

[Frank] Okay.

S: You like that?

That would be nice.

S: And you’re going to be at that level of ability next week, aye?

I’ll need something outside of myself that helps.

S: What would it require for you to be able to play at that level? Could you practice enough to do it?

Probably at this point in my life it’s not a possibility.

S: You’re right. Therefore, what is a possibility.

To play better than I play now. To play at a level that’s satisfying.

S: Beethoven does not satisfy you?

Only because it’s not within the realm of my [possible] achievement.

S: What is within the realm of your achievement?

Chopsticks.

S: That’s not within the realm of his achievement yet. What is it . . . tick, tick, tick.

A metronome. To play in time to a song.

S: I’m not trying to push you here, but that’s exactly my point. In the bigger picture, he would get so discouraged he could not continue. He would procrastinate; he would find reasons to not do. In the smaller picture, he can say, “I can do this; I can work to be. I am capable here.”

Sweet souls, one of the greatest problems I am running into with you dear, New Age masters is that, as you are testing your magnificence and ascendancy, you are allowing yourself to get so discouraged that you quit, that you procrastinate, that you are inconsistent—that you don’t act—rather than narrow your focus—”Oh, how dishonorable, how awful, how bad!”—rather than narrow your focus and give yourself something you can do.

There is an old joke: I would never become a member of a club that would have me, or something like that. (I really would never become a member of a club that would have me.) And you tend to live with that attitude. What am I saying there?

I am not enough, so why would I have confidence in people who think I am?

S: All right.

I think possibly we have no idea what time frame we have and what we’re supposed to be like at any given step of the process. Therefore, we expect too much of ourselves.

S: If I am capable of mastery, I don’t want it. If I am capable of ascension, it must not be very special.

What about time pressure? You feel that in this form you have a limited amount of time. So you feel the pressure to accelerate faster than when you should. It’s hard to know the difference.

S: Difference between . . . ?

How fast—what’s causing the pressure, whether it’s the time we have left or our own ability.

S: It creates a conflict. Very often you procrastinate because you know there is so much to do and so little time to do it that it’s better to just hold off and not start getting involved than it is to just take on so much and do so much. Guilty, aye. So what do you do about that sense of impending doom—got to hurry, got to do, now, now, now?

I realize that I still read my own projected, perceived rate of progress into it. If I would just take lots of little steps, I’d get there.

S: Aye. More often than not, your sense of pressure is because your life is so disorganized that you’re not seeing yourself getting things done. You’re not seeing the small completions that let you know that you can do the big ones, so you get overwhelmed by it, and it causes that much more pressure.

I think what causes a problem is that, when you start something new, there’s such tremendous growth at the beginning that we don’t continue to see that same rate of growth. Then you start procrastinating.

S: Aye. Again, consistency.

Narrow your focus to the benefit the moment will give you. Prioritize the task of that moment, and then give yourself a good time when you complete. You will not act if you don’t think you can, and you will never think you can if you keep the possibility so far out of your reach that you are safely sabotaging.