Faces in the Clouds

By Sarah Pasch

As published in Reality Change: The Global Seth Journal, First Quarter 1997.

Seth has stated over and over that the entire external-material world that each of us experiences is simply a self-created panorama of symbols that pictorializes our internal self. Did you get that -- experientially, I mean? No? I didn't either.

This is one of those life-changing revelations that is sprinkled amongst so much other language in the Seth material, that it seems almost casual. Said in passing, like, "Aunt Minnie called and asked about you - by the way, your pants are on fire - and I told her that we planned to drive up there next month."

The groove of a million clichés we've accepted all our lives catches and holds us, thoughtless, in the rut:
"The victim was waiting for a bus when she was approached by . . . . "
- "I'm being audited by the IRS, those bastards . . . ."
- "Oh, that's just a coincidence . . . ."
- "He really was struck down by a bad case of the flu, poor fellow . . . ."
- "I couldn't do anything about it, officer. She just darted out into the street . . . ."
- "I lost my job through no fault of my own."
All the way back to,
"I didn't mean to run over Mickey with my tricycle, Mommy. It was an accident!"

and
"I didn't ask to be born!"

Our whole language is peppered with expressions of victimization and powerlessness. They have always been expected and accepted within our mode of communication with one another. There is kinship in commiseration, and if one wants to be an accepted member of society, one of the rules includes griping about the government, crabbing about the police department, groaning about the Middle East - with a liberal dash of sympathy for you and me and how we suffer, from neighbors, relatives, co-workers, the weather, the traffic, and bad hair days. Pick a subject - any subject - and someone in the group will have a tale of mistreatment to tell. The conversation becomes spirited, everyone has an opinion, the shared outrage warms the cockles and forms a sisterhood or brotherhood. Everyone huddles shoulder to shoulder around the little campfire in the dark of night, and the bogeyman is held at bay for a time.

What happens when one finally thaws out the concept of self-creation from its deep-freeze dormancy in the intellect and lets it begin to trickle down into the gut? Gets a good look at the bogeyman and see one's own face?

My.......ENTIRE.......world.......is.......a.......symbol.......of.......my.......internal.......self?

For me, it happened this way:

With a shock, my earth comes to a shuddering stop that knocks me off my feet. I cringe, waiting for the aftershock, braced for the sky to fall. But it doesn't.

I open my mouth to express - something, but what would come out is one of the million clichés, and I comprehend how suddenly pointless they have become. And I am silenced.

I look around, and for a moment, there is nothing there: The cataclysm has cleaned house, emptying out rooms full of thoughts and attitudes that don't fit anymore.

I get this mental picture of the earth stopping and my "stuff" hurtling into space, an odd pile of junk eventually floating

aimlessly out there. I would chuckle over the humor of it, except that I'm feeling rather insecure, devoid of the thought processes I am accustomed to.

Tentatively, awkwardly, the Earth jerks and turns again, in the opposite direction, and my thoughts start to move in a kind of reverse fashion also.

Rather than "Why did he say that to me?" my mind timidly suggests, "Why did I say that to myself, through him?" Hmm - curious.

I begin to explore the what-ifs of this new perspective. Graceless and self-conscious, I constantly retrace my steps out of some snap reaction that was once designed to leave me blameless but now leads me into a dead end.

With a new supersensitivity, I notice just how saturated society is in general with attitudes of faultlessness, and it abrades and annoys. I bite my tongue a lot during these times, to keep from exploding, "You idiots! That kind of thinking is bass-ackwards!" Of course I'm really pep-talking myself, pumping myself up, building speed.

The first 100 times I introduce this new idea of self-creation into typical conversation with "normal" people, I'm met with snickers, blank stares, stone deafness - or I find that if I want to stop a conversation dead in its tracks, this is a good way to do it.

It takes no more than a few attempts, tentatively suggesting that someone is

responsible for his own auto accident, or illness, or misfortune - and the ensuing explosive reaction - to learn to keep my mouth shut.

I become less conversational, beginning to feel I've set myself apart from the "madding crowd." I am ever more grateful for the few students of Seth around me: With them, I can express my new self, and I need that badly. I have just discovered how to put one foot in front of the other and walk, and it's MY new invention. I am vociferous and excited, and veterans of self-creation patiently listen, understanding surely, that they must want once again to hear the basics from an enthusiastic novice - or they wouldn't be there.

Many false starts and much confusion later, I am beginning to get the hang of seeing my reality as symbols of myself, and it starts to be fun.

The pine cone cob that just struck my shoulder, causing me to look up and see our resident squirrel sitting in the pine tree, gorging himself: What does it mean?

The newly discovered food supplement that I'm unaccountably enthusiastic over: What physical condition am I now ready to correct or perfect with this new ritual, and what is changing in my psyche that is symbolized by this physical condition?

The driver who gets loudly bent out of shape when I innocently (and politely) move into the lane he wanted to move into first: What am I beating on myself for, this time?

I feel a growing awareness of power within myself over my own created reality. Everything is important, and I have put it there for a purpose.

A decision is made, however, to leave alone many of those symbols that I've accepted as a member of mass consciousness—that the sky is blue, that I move through the world with my feet pointed downwards, that the kitchen sink is where it has always been and that when I turn on the faucet, water runs out.  There is already plenty to expend my energy on in understanding that part of reality which is eccentrically my world, and realizing that I have created it to reflect myself to my self.

Let those things of mass consciousness, the "laws of nature" remain - they can be a foundation upon which I build my unique variations.

Of course I am ecstatic to be a part of the team at an SNI conference that lifts a heavy table two feet off the floor with only the touch of our fingertips and follows it swooping around the room. This is certainly a good example of defying the laws of nature and quitting mass consciousness for the moment.

But I am mainly interested in personal progress, in learning to be totally true to myself. Although table lifting can serve to confirm my power over my reality, it fits my purpose better to concentrate on understanding the eccentricities of what is peculiar in my reality, rather than to become enamored with parlor tricks.

And so (I say) I don't just "happen" to be in the wrong place at the wrong time (poor me) when the driver in the other lane is feeling crusty and mean. I know darn good and well just which reality of his I am latching on to, and I choose the unpleasant one rather than another. Why? As it turns out, it is likely that I am feeling rather unpleasant towards myself at the moment, and with a little bit of self-honesty I'll know exactly what is making me so mad - and why I believe a tongue-lashing is in order.

My little red 4-cylinder car, in which I've darted around the city for years, must be sold. The air conditioner will cost more to fix than the car is worth, and I live in a city with two seasons: Summer and August.

Aha! Symbols again: small, quick, red. Doesn't it fit anymore? Has the power grown beyond the capacity of the vehicle of expression to remain balanced and comfortable - or something like that? Perhaps. I do know that ever since I bought it, some other drivers did not take my little car seriously, and they had no compunction about cutting in front of me as if I were invisible. It necessitated driving defensively to the extreme. Maybe the time for that is past. Maybe I understand that I'm a polliwog no longer.

I don't have to look for another car. It comes to me, one that I pay cash for and own entirely. It is a little older than the red car, but it is a much better car and I know it's history of having been babied all it's life. It's a V-8, a solid, powerful car - white, with a gold hardtop - symbols again.

One message that I get, not a generality, but just one for me: Older is better. I, who am only a couple of years from sixty and don't intend to live like a conventional 60-year old, while being afraid at the same time that being ollllderrr might start having some appeal: getting set in my ways and opinions, resisting change, stiffening in the joints so

that I don't have to bend to consider new ideas. Here's a chance to experiment with unconventional ideas about aging.

This new car immediately "mandates" that I call her "Kissy," a kind of ridiculous name, but I succumb. Perhaps I will understand its meaning as time goes on.

Kissy loves the open road, and I cruise up to Austin and back on a breeze, blowing her pipes out after being parked for eight months before I acquired her. With a touch, she surges ahead of slower cars. She's a big bull frog, and no one cuts me off anymore.

After my little car (my red Colt: I called her Flicka), I'm awed by Kissy's power, and I drive ever more carefully, aware that I could crush most other cars on the road. With more power comes greater responsibility, and I feel that message in symbol every time I pull the car out of my driveway.

After four trips to the courthouse and four different versions of the "correct" process by one authority or another, and still no successful transfer of title of my little red car to the new owner, it becomes apparent to me that I'm still hanging on to ownership of that old self. I try not to give myself a hard time about it: Sometimes it takes a while to let go of what one was used to.

I am housesitting for Jack for a couple of years while he works a lucrative job in California. Jack and I go back before time began. He knows this as well as I do, even though he tries so hard to be one of those rational/materialistic types.

We get along quite well with a thousand miles between us and an occasional visit. No promises, no commitments.

But I take care of his house as I would my own. I am determined that if someday I turn around and walk out of his life, I will have left his home more beautiful than when I moved into it.

It's not only my gift to Jack because of caring for him; it's a personal thing that comes from my life choice to be Johnny Appleseed and leave seedlings of trees wherever I've been. Having changed homes nine times in nine years (I feel sure that big hunks of growth and change have been behind this), it's gotten to be an absolute habit to look around the home I'm about to vacate and ask myself, "How is this place better now than when I moved into it?"

I discover that the ivy that Jack has had growing up his whole front wall for the past twelve years has become a highway for termites colonizing the attic. The termites must go, of course, but so must the ivy.

I take on the job of digging up sixty cubic yards of heavy Texas soil (my chiropractor would blanch if she knew!). The other old bushes are worth saving, but the root systems of these and the ivy are so thick and intertwined that I must use an ax in some places, and it is slow and heavy labor.

For two months, this is my sole after-work and weekend project. Three shovels are broken, mountains of earth sit on the driveway while I sift through lower layers. I become lean and tan.

The neighbors must think I'm crazy, for often I point the hose nozzle straight up into

the air and stand under the downpour just to cool off.

I think a lot about why I created this reality; about why I, rather than Jack, was the one who discovered the termites, and about why I feel compelled to be so thorough about cleaning out every last ivy root so that the vine will never grow back again.

I think I understand: Jack had become overburdened by the sheer size and weight of his material symbols, and he needed to get away for a while and figure some things out. After all, he had left probably 80% of his possessions in the house, telling me to do whatever I wanted with most of them.

Something in me knows that the tangled network of roots stands for a myriad of old connections between Jack and me, and clearing them all out means resolution and clearing the way ahead of us. (Together or apart remains to be seen. I am learning to simply be concerned with the joyousness of my direction, and to deeply believe that whoever my partner ends up being, he will satisfy that outlook and inlook.)

The front of the house is replanted now. Some of the old holly bushes have survived their upheaval and severe pruning, and new glossy-green leaves are thickening. Rose bushes, pinks, salvia, buddleia, crepe myrtle, verbena, and yarrow are planted, and along the front edge is a thick row of portulaca that almost hurts the eyes with its flowery blaze.

The neighbors may still think I'm crazy, but they compliment me on the results.

Everything is blooming in spite of the heat and drought in Texas, for I water and weed and fertilize religiously. Symbols of my life - symbols of my publicly stated life, since this is the front yard. The symbols tell me that with intent, and with willingness to put forth the effort, and with belief in my power over my reality, my life is blooming. I notice that in fits and starts, it is indeed.

My boss, the director of the private high school I work for, is a woman of erratic mood swings. She is of bawdy good humor, morose seethings, rages that fall just short of physical violence, warm and motherly concern - drama and posings. Like the deal of the cards, one never knows which mood will turn up.

She is 90% ego and 10% genuineness, and she avoids taking me into her confidence because I don't look up to her. I must admit it: I tend to take the opposite view. I label her: "She doesn't have friends; she has subjects!"

As time goes on, it becomes an eroding stress, this walking on eggshells and avoiding the very person whose side I should be working close by.

In the meantime, I struggle internally with understanding why I would create this reality and what the symbols mean to me. Of course I had no conscious idea when I accepted the job that it came with a boss who was so threatened, or I wouldn't have ever set foot on campus.

But that's all part of the game of life, I remind myself ruefully. We will not see the unpleasantness up ahead, although we are perfectly capable of doing so, because if we were forewarned, our human natures would avoid that issue or challenge as if it were a gang war in the next block. That issue may be the most valuable thing we could work through, though, so our humanity develops a blind spot, and into the fray we charge.

Over a period of time, I come to understand that Mary is not so different from myself. She in her extreme emotionalism and egotism, is the flip side of my disciplined professionalism, my efforts towards intuitive indifference. And there are times when anger breaks through my control too, because although I truly love many of the kids, some teenagers can be infuriatingly, arrogantly irresponsible.

At the end of the school year at a celebratory breakfast, the students in high humor award me the PMS trophy, letting me know in confidence that it was my boss to whom they really wanted to give it but didn't dare. I enjoy the joke, but later I ask myself: Why me, and not one of the other staff members?

I think I know. They understand more than they are aware of, and giving me the award was spontaneous and inspired. The shadow that a red apple casts is not black; it is green, the complimentary color to red.

The award underlines the symbolic connection of my boss to me, and after that day I somehow understand that I have to begin accepting her as an aspect of myself, even if it remains for the most part a latent one. However rational I manage to remain most of the time, I must come to a level of acceptance of a deep and sometimes turbulent understream of emotion. However spiritual a perspective I manage, I must recognize the presence of a sensitive ego that tends to take the bit in its teeth under duress.

Living a life in a constant state of fear, as is the habit of general society (I remember it well!) can keep one immersed in ego and barely controlled emotional extremes, and that is the only difference between Mary and me.

Standing outside of the school building one day, smoking a cigarette, I notice in the corner of my vision a bird about the size of a mockingbird flying towards the building. I pay no attention to it until it seems that an inordinate amount of time has passed and the bird has still not disappeared over the roof. I turn my head towards the movement in the air and see an extraordinary thing: The bird is hovering in place just below the canopy, about six feet away from me, beating its wings almost as fast as a hummingbird and looking straight at me. Internally I almost hear, "Well! Now you've taken notice." And with that, the bird swoops away in the direction from which it had come. A symbol of what? I'm not sure, but I do know it lifts my heart out of a loneliness I had been feeling.

Soon after that, I know the exact day that I finish resolving those internal issues that reflected outward, because this is the day that I say to myself, "That's it. I'm not annoyed any more; I'm just genuinely bored with all these histrionics." Bored? I am jubilant, for I've long known that once I become TRUTHFULLY BORED with an issue, I'm at the end of it.

One early morning just before I terminate my job with the school, right as the alarm clock is beeping me back to consciousness, my dream self present me with the grandest, most elegant house, full of elaborate gingerbread and of a most pristine, sparkling white - and then says, "That's you," and plants a hologram of my physical self standing next to the house.

In short order, then, that job becomes an occupation of the past. I drive away from the school for the last time, feeling nothing but relief to be unburdened and happy anticipation over where I am headed. I am surprised, in view of the fact that I'm not independently wealthy, that for once I feel no fear. But perhaps I've gained a good measure of self-trust over the years. Maybe older IS better.

This time, there is no period of feeling knocked off my perch, no time spent in licking my wounds. The very next day I am up early to get started in satisfying the human need to "do something," i.e., hunt for a better job.

I go through the prescribed procedure, but all along, I know deep down inside that the right job will fall in my lap. The ritual I'm going through now is solely for the purpose of indulging that rational self that has been trained in the "correct" way to hunt for employment. The real job hunt is going on internally.

Since all the characteristics of my financial means are more symbols of my beliefs about myself, I realize that the new "means" will again be appropriate to my present beliefs. In retrospect (and it seems that so many times, retrospect is the best I can manage), my last job concerned an issue

that was more important than the job itself. It was nice that I was able to earn a living while in the process of concluding something.

But I don't care for unpleasant surprises, so I've been working hard not only on increased self-honesty (so that I won't enter the next job with a blind spot) but on general deservability, too.

What symbol will finally manifest? I ponder, feeling both determined and skittish at once, for I know there is a conflict present: My current level of deservability and rational self demand that I find employment in working for someone else. The soul of self yearns to have the means take care of itself and allow me to devote my energy to writing.

Will I end up creating a centaur - half man and half horse? Maybe.

My hair badly needs cutting, but messages left with the two hair stylists whose techniques I respect have not been returned. One has been cutting my hair for the last couple of years, the other has only cut my daughter's difficult hair and would be brand new to me.

Why do I seem to be having trouble getting my hair cut? What does it mean? I entertain the idea that perhaps a particular thought process, symbolized by the hair, has not yet finished "growing," and it's not quite time for the "cutoff."

In the meantime, I think of changing my hair style, which I would not have done had I been able to get it cut in time. There have been some minor changes in thinking, along with the hair changes, as it has grown - maybe a change in style is appropriate.

I connect with the new hair stylist before my accustomed one returns my calls, and I make an appointment. Amazingly, I am

trembling with excitement when I hang up the phone. Symbols: A big leap is about to take place - something in me knows that.

I walk into the new salon and immediately apprehend that it is atypical: There are no vibrations of brittle materialism, of one-upmanship. Within the first ten minutes, a strong connection, through pure eye contact, is made with four people - one of them Keith, the new hair stylist.

The haircut is a success, a new line of relationships begun. Nothing so very dramatic, but because I had trembled with excitement when the telephone contact was first made, I understand that in a warm and social fashion I have just been introduced to a new reality that holds bright promise.

It occurs to me that the big difference between dreaming and waking symbols is the acceptance of mass consciousness restrictions in our waking lives that for the most part prevents us from creating symbols that would cause us cardiac arrest. I know what the reaction of my wakeful self would be to a six-foot cockroach lumbering up my staircase!

That's not to say that all the workaday symbols are so very desirable - like the stream of ants that have found the cat food (you're letting material irritants get to you), the plant that dies in spite of my care (learn to accept physical death as part of the motion of consciousness), the ring of keys that takes forty-five minutes to find (you really didn't want to go out tonight), the unanimous beating-up-gunning-down "entertainment" on TV (there's more anger there than you'll admit to right now), the hospitalized sister of a friend, dying of spinal meningitis (fragments of childhood and the same illness: grieving remains to be done over it).

Many more are beautiful, though: the scent of night blooming jasmine, the teenager who

spontaneously calls me Forest Gump (and he knows I'm not mentally slow), the early morning coffee on the deck when the air is filled with bird song, the nights out dancing when the music is perfect and I'm in the groove - and most of all, the exquisite thrill of looking into someone's eyes - really looking.

It often takes all my courage to be honest and face myself in my world-symbols, for some of them are formidable, or oblique, or just plain alien.

With that in mind, and reminding myself again that the only way truly out of it is through it, I take a deep breath, pinch my metaphoric nose - and plunge once more.

                      © 1997 by Sarah Pasch