Grasping the Implications of Your Personal Goals

[usmaak]

In addition to reading all of the Seth books again, I am also going through the Living a Safe Universe series again.  I came across a fantastic exercise in vol. 2 of the book that I wanted to share here.  I, perhaps like many others, have a difficult time keeping all of the ramifications of decisions straight in my head.  Even the most exciting goal/decision has upsides and downsides, even just from an ego/camouflage based perspective.  Fitting it in with value fulfillment and significance is even more of a challenge.  In the exercise, you take a goal, assume that the achievement of the goal is inevitable, and then answer a bunch of questions.  I took one of my long term goals and ran it through the exercise.  The results were telling.  One of the things that it showed me is that maybe the reason I haven't achieved the goal is because I have conflicting feeling about it.  I was also able to determine that it might not be in the best interest for my value fulfillment and that I might have more to learn from the experience that I've put myself in.  I'm not a big on keeping a journal.  I set this year as the year where I was going to get past that.  I even paid for a year of Day One as a way to keep myself honest.  My handwriting is abysmal, so I do it on my MacBook.  It hasn't turned out as I expected.  Many keep a daily "dear diary this is what I did today" type of journal.  Mine hasn't turned out that way.  It has been entirely about Seth like material.  Eckhart Tolle has also figured pretty prominently into it.  When I was working on ACIM, before finally accepting that I just couldn't do it anymore, I also had a lot about that.  It's been about figuring out what makes me tick and solving issues in my life.  And it is not daily.  It is only when the mood strikes.  I've put quite a few of the exercises in Living a Safe Universe in it as well.  This has worked for me and it's June and I'm still sticking with it.

Anyway, here's the exercise that I was talking about.  I really liked it and wanted to share it here with you all.

Grasping the Implications of Your Personal Goals

Start this task by choosing a goal which you would like to manifest. Now you'll take a look at its influence and ramifications, and make a final choice on whether or not to proceed with it.

1. If you really believed your goal was inevitable , what would go through your mind? How would it be different than if you only hoped it would happen? Answer these questions to find out:

* What would I think today about what is to come?
* How would I feel today about what is to come?
* How would I act today knowing what is to come?
* What advantages would there be with my goal's appearance?
* What disadvantages would there be?
* How would my goal increase my value fulfillment?
* How does my goal match my known significance?

2. And the final question: Is this goal a clear, obvious choice to you now? Or are there any doubts about how it fits in with your inner self's hopes and plans for you? And if there are doubts, can you easily balance them against your choice?

Dahl, Lynda Madden. Living a Safe Universe, Vol. 2: A Book for Seth Readers (Living a Safe Universe: A Book for Seth Readers) (pp. 91-92). The Woodbridge Group. Kindle Edition.

[michaelk]

Mine hasn't turned out that way.  It has been entirely about Seth like material.  Eckhart Tolle has also figured pretty prominently into it.

It's been about figuring out what makes me tick and solving issues in my life.

this all sounds awesome!

thanks for posting the exercise - seems like it could really pull out a lot of the crosstalk i know i go through in my own cracked head. hahahahaha...

appreciate it.

[Deb]

One of the things that it showed me is that maybe the reason I haven't achieved the goal is because I have conflicting feeling about it.  I was also able to determine that it might not be in the best interest for my value fulfillment and that I might have more to learn from the experience that I've put myself in.

Bingo! I feel this is the gist of this exercise. Often, with the Seth materials and Abraham Hicks as well,  people ask "why didn't I get what I want?"

While the inner self and entity would know the whys, this is a great exercise for our outer self to go deeper and figure it out at this level. I wonder if that conflicting feeling is a message from the inner self that a particular goal is not in alignment with our overall goals in this life?  Such as Seth says how impulses often come from our unconscious knowledge, so would uncertainty or feelings of conflict serve as guidelines for us.

"Your personal impulses provide those guidelines by showing you how best to use probabilities so that you fulfill your own potential to greatest advantage — and [in] so doing, provide constructive help to the society at large."
—NoME Chapter 8: Session 860, June 13, 1979

Thanks for sharing the exercise, I think Lynda is terrific at explaining how to use the Seth materials in our daily lives. 

[leidl]

Thank you for posting this usmaak--it really helped confirm for me the rightness of a certain goal that has been in my face a lot recently.  I'm not clear though on the meaning of this question:

* How does my goal match my known significance?

That syntax is a little weird for me.  If the question just means something like "does my goal match with what I've felt in the past to be significant for me," how is that different from the question about value fulfillment?

Thank you to anyone who can explain. 

[usmaak]

Thank you for posting this usmaak--it really helped confirm for me the rightness of a certain goal that has been in my face a lot recently.  I'm not clear though on the meaning of this question:

* How does my goal match my known significance?

That syntax is a little weird for me.  If the question just means something like "does my goal match with what I've felt in the past to be significant for me," how is that different from the question about value fulfillment?

Thank you to anyone who can explain. 

This is from Living a Safe Universe Book 1.  I was unfamiliar with it as well.

In The Nature of the Psyche, session 788, Seth tells us, "The universe, by whatever name and in whatever manifestation, attains its reality through ordered sequences of significances." And, "You imprint the universe with your own significance, and using that as a focus you draw from it, or attract, those events that fit your unique purposes and needs." And, "Each consciousness is endowed with creativity... .sing its own significance as a focus to draw into its experience whatever events are possible for it from the universe itself."

Said another way, significances are a tool used by consciousness to organize the spacious present, defining from an unpredictable field of action a predictable range of action accessible to it. Although there are many ways, great and small, that the universe can be organized into predictable ranges of action, here's one example.

I am a consciousness which chose to be born as a white female living in twenty-first century America ("I" to be identified as current personality and its inner self later in the book). I chose those conditions pre-birth, with great purpose and intent behind my decisions, and I also chose certain personality and character traits. Those on-purpose choices would then act as significance magnets in the spacious present, which would define my range of potential action. Logically, that means there are significances that don't fit within what I want to experience in this particular existence. So, the significances I initially chose, which broadly define the probabilities I can experience in this lifetime, set the framework for the decisions and choices available to me.

But Seth goes on to say more about significances, clarifying for us they not only define the larger picture of our potentials in life, but also the day-to-day manifestations. In other words, all manifestations, large and small, start life as significances that order themselves into a meaningful array, no matter whether we're of Seth's vintage or involved in the camouflage of physical reality. Significances are used by all consciousness to bring order and boundaries, however loose they may be, to their potential creations. So, it's accurate to say all the events we meet are built of significances.

Dahl, Lynda Madden. Living a Safe Universe: A Book for Seth Readers (pp. 49-50). The Woodbridge Group. Kindle Edition.

[leidl]

Really helpful!  Thank you, usmaak.  I've read Nature of the Psyche, but this didn't stick.  Dahl makes Seth's language more relatable, as many here have said.

[Kyle]

This is an attempt to illustrate the idea of significances as universal meanings, through all the factors that arise from them.

But Seth goes on to say more about significances, clarifying for us they not only define the larger picture of our potentials in life, but also the day-to-day manifestations. In other words, all manifestations, large and small, start life as significances that order themselves into a meaningful array, no matter whether we're of Seth's vintage or involved in the camouflage of physical reality. Significances are used by all consciousness to bring order and boundaries, however loose they may be, to their potential creations. So, it's accurate to say all the events we meet are built of significances.

This is an insightful statement; it captures meanings that for me can be unpacked further. In this view, beliefs, intentions, and signifiers are all built of significances. An intention arises from a set of beliefs and in turn, gives rise to an expression of what is intended, a signifier, if you will. When I greet someone and we exchange words, we are signifying mutual social intentions, and our meaningful exchange depends on shared beliefs about the world and our respective places in it.

When we examine this mutual experience, we reveal the meanings or significances that underlie it. This gives me a sense that I have comprehended a social scenario more richly than before. I believe other scenarios can reveal their significances in a similar manner. When I examine an internal conflict of my own, it can lead to insights about beliefs, intentions, and signifiers that are somehow out of sync. This is another way of examining the implications of personal goals.

I see a missing piece in this scheme. Aren't our expectations distinct from our intentions? Expectations also arise from beliefs, and we interpret the meanings signified by others through the filter of our expectations. I can signify my intentions with my words, tone of voice, and body language. My signifying is then interpreted according to the listener's expectations, and ultimately the beliefs that gave rise to those expectations. So there's a reciprocity between signifying and interpreting.

Several of the relationships among these factors are reciprocal pairings. Analogous to the pairing of signifying and interpreting is that of intention and expectation. A further analogy can be drawn between self and world, in which beliefs about self are experienced as internal, while beliefs about the world are experienced as external. I guess that could be what we call reality. Regardless, these analogies feel like distinct dimensions or levels of a unified, whole experience.