Tufti the Priestess

by Vadim Zeland

  Besides, you can never avoid the script. It is just that by setting reality you initiate a new one. The new script is not yours either, you are still within its power. But it will lead you to the desired result.

  Should you hide from the other characters? However much you may like to stand out, I do not advise that you advertise your abilities. In the Middle Ages, people were burned at the stake for such things, and today, you could get tucked away in a quiet shelter somewhere. You are already a little loopy, so don’t be sleepers; don’t give your presence away; obey your priestess. I love you so much, I could kill you all!

  Being Present

  Hey, hey, and away! Come to me, my cunning imitators and artful pretenders, secret maniacs and hidden super-freaks! Did you enjoy the imitation game? Let’s repeat what we’ve covered so far.

  Physical reality is accessible here, in the materialisation frame.

  Access to the future is open only from the other side, in the image frame.

  You are doomed to exist in reality, like characters in a film roll.

  You cannot circumvent the script, but you can wake up and start another one.

  You change the filmstrip but continue playing a role, whilst hiding your presence.

  Presence in a motion picture. What does that mean? Mostly, it refers to the presence of your conscious awareness of being — your Self, your presence as a living, competent and rational individual in an immutable motion picture. Although the film is spinning fast, it is already as predestined, as the behaviour of all its characters is predetermined.

  Your presence there highlights you as awakened among the unawakened. You are consciously aware of your individuality and are aware of what is happening. Your behaviour inside the film is also predetermined by the scenario. However, your presence gives you the opportunity to change the film roll and switch from one to another.

  To achieve presence, you have to come alive, give yourself a shake and determine your location: the image frame or the materialisation frame. In other words, where is your attention focused: at the central awareness point or on one of the screens. In essence, you are dual beings that can be both on this side of the mirror and the other.

  You are present here when you are there. It’s a paradox. Failing that, you are absent, that is, you are in an incompetent state of non-awareness and entirely at the mercy of the script.

  Remember I said: when you are awakened in waking life, your attention crosses the mirror boundary and ends up in your virtual mannequin. When you fall asleep in bed and see a dream, the same thing happens, only the quality of it is different. In your sleep, you can only propel virtual reality. You can’t influence physical reality. It would be more accurate to say that you can, but it is very difficult — not a matter for snails.

  In a state of waking presence, you acquire the ability to compose impending reality, which will become physically manifest. (You see, I keep repeating the thought, so that you understand well that you can and should be composing your own reality.) However, there is one thing which you must understand for yourselves. When you compose reality, you are determining the end goal — the impending frame, not a chain of events.

  Composing reality is about choosing the film roll, not about controlling the script. The script is beyond your power. You are not given to know what exactly the script should look like in order to bring you to your goal. And you don’t need to know. You are working as a film projector. Once the goal frame is illuminated in your projector, the course of events will automatically turn out as they should.

  In choosing the film roll, you set a new script in motion. The script does not belong to you but to the events that have been recorded on it, moreover, without your knowledge. Only the goal frame is yours. The film roll chooses itself in accordance with the specified frame. You don’t have to understand exactly how this happens. Illuminate your frame again and again, and you will shift from one roll to another until you eventually arrive at your destination.

  In the Eternity archive, film rolls are arranged in parallel. The scripts of the film rolls placed most closely differ only in minor nuances. In composing reality, you gradually shift from one to another. First you appear on a film roll, where the result is close to the set goal but not quite there yet. Then it gets closer and closer.

  All this takes place invisibly to the eye and at different realisation speeds, depending on the complexity of the desired goal. Simple goals are reached almost immediately, whereas more challenging ones that require you to ‘go far’, require time and patience.

  Your task is to focus your attention on the impending frame. The script is not a matter for your concern. If you try and set the script or resist it, you will get caught up in its trap. When trying to influence the course of events, you take the reality of the current frame in a death grip, which is pointless. The harder you hold on, the more tightly you will be gripped by the tail, by the plait that is.

  Similarly, it is pointless trying to influence other people. Trying to manipulate others is a base, thankless task. It can end up knocking you sideways or even creating the opposite effect to the one you wanted. Characters act according to their own script. Trying to influence them, you fall into a trap again. Don’t do it. They will come running to you themselves and do everything that you want them to. More on that later.

  I repeat, that you need to influence the end result — the impending frame, not events or other people although you will still try to do so, mainly out of habit. You always persist in having everything go according to your plan, but I will win this habit off you as well.

  How stuffy and pushy you are! I would gladly dissect you all. I would staple you to watercolour paper like harmful insects, or roll you in a jar with formalin and make an example of you to all other creatures. I advise you to behave decently. Don’t forget: I am Tufti, your priestess. Praise me, worship me, do not dare to anger me!

  Advantage

  Uh, I am so bored of you! You are so spoiled! So capricious! That’s what you are! But just you so much as hint that you’ve had enough of me! Let’s repeat the lesson, now!

  You are dual beings, capable of being on both sides of the mirror.

  You are present here when you are there.

  To be present, you have to shift your attention to the centre.

  In the condition of being present, you are capable of jumping from one film roll to another.

  Composing reality is not about controlling the script but choosing the film roll.

  The desire to influence the script binds you to it.

  Once again, let’s consolidate what we’ve covered so far. You need to influence the final result — the forthcoming frame, not events and people. All you have to do is illuminate the goal frame, and the course of events will unfold as they should.

  The script does not belong to you. It is never yours, even when you think that it is your idea. If you try to change it or oppose it, the script will trap you. The script is like a spider’s web. The more you wriggle, the more you become entwined. For the script to let you go, you have to let go of the script.

  You can never be entirely free of the script. Remember when we spoke about imitation, I told you that the script is not the result of anyone’s subjective will but an objective reality, from which there is no escape. And yet there is no need to escape! The script will work towards your goal if you set one.

  When you compose reality, the script rearranges itself to fit your composition, even if you cannot perceive this happening. All you have to do is systematically illuminate the goal frame. But you will persist in having everything run according to your plan, and in this, you hinder the implementation of what you have imagined.

  And even when you do not actively compose reality, passively drifting along the current of events, the script isn’t out to harm you, because causing harm is energetically
costly. The script always takes the path of least resistance, but you resist and so you spoil everything.

  You spoil things in as much as you express non-acceptance. In this way unconsciously and without deliberately meaning to, you compose for yourself a worse reality than the existing one, albeit not as effectively as you would with intention and awareness. You condescend to express your dislike every time something contradicts your expectations and plans. That’s how you are — irritating and tedious.

  So, to avoid distorting reality, instead of turning it into a wonderful world that is pleasant in all respects, you will need to make a habit of one simple principle: find the advantage in everything. Literally, try and take the advantage from any disappointing situation, and generally from any event that causes you the slightest feeling of aversion. Set yourself the goal of reaping the benefit.

  Any event or situation in life is made up of the negative and the positive. Reality is dual in nature. Where there is black, there you will find white. Your task, instead of wrestling with it and being single-minded and stroppy, is to set about seeking the advantage in any situation. I won’t give examples, just try it and you’ll understand instantly, just how brilliantly this approach works.

  But in order for it to work, as you must understand already, it is essential that you wake up and shift your attention to the centre. The triggers here are mainly external: someone says something or does something, or something is happening or being done around you — anything that evokes a feeling of nonacceptance, from slight displeasure to rage (interesting, what does a raging snail look like?). The feelings activated include irritation, depression, anxiety, aggression, and fear.

  The attention is shifted to the centre in order to disengage from the script on the current film roll and skip to another, alternative one. The fact is that your usual script affects your standard film roll: you give a knee-jerk reaction due to your noxiousness character or your propensity to be negative, or your habit of being defensive, or elevated opinion of yourself, or simply because nothing is going “the way you want it to”. As a result, usually, you make life difficult for yourself and others.

  On the alternative film roll, in contrast, everything turns out to your advantage because you stopped at the right moment and made that advantage your choice. It is very simple. What you choose is what you get. In order to make the choice, all you have to do is think for a moment and ask yourself, what might be the advantage of this? And from then on, try and follow the script rather than resist it. Literally, take the piece of advice, listen to the opinion, agree, go for something, accept whatever you would previously have rejected or seen as a cause for conflict.

  The advantage method is the following:

  Catch yourself playing out the non-acceptance activator.

  Wake up: I see myself and I see reality.

  Ask yourself the question: what advantage might there be in this?

  If an answer comes to you, accept it and reap the benefit.

  If nothing comes to you, try and accept the situation for what it is.

  The last point might sound questionable to you. After all, not everything in life is acceptable and there is not necessarily an advantage to every situation. Suppose that someone is about to beat you round the head. What are you supposed to do — hold it out for them to take another swipe? Nonetheless, in reality, there is one immutable law. The law has it that if you take seeking advantage as a guiding principle, in life you will encounter fewer and fewer events that are harmful. This includes the kind of events that result in having a blue face and a cold body and lying in the morgue. U-la-la!

  Allowing

  So, my dears, my beauties, in our last lesson we learned that stupid snails always insist on their own script for the development of certain events, and that when something goes awry, they become resentful and even angry, but not in your case, right, my angels?

  The script will let you go when you let go of the script.

  Once a goal has been set, the script will arrange itself so that it is achieved.

  By insisting on your own plan, you get in the way of the design.

  By expressing non-acceptance, you compose a reality that is even worse.

  By choosing to seek advantage, you reap the benefit.

  Let’s repeat the paradoxical principle — set the goal frame, not the script. It is paradoxical because it does not tally with your accustomed beliefs, that you can and should battle with your current reality, and that composing forthcoming reality is wrong and even impossible. In fact, it’s the other way round.

  You can’t know how the goal will be reached and you don’t need to know, particularly in the early stages of things. Because if the probable answers to asking “how?” plunge you into feelings of horror or despair, this will impose a psychological block on your ability to compose your target reality.

  You can’t know exactly which script will lead to the accomplishment of precisely this goal in the context of your individual life. How could you know when you are a character in a film being led by a script? Your task is to know the ‘result’ — what you want to achieve, and use your plait to compose the corresponding picture of reality in thoughts, words, and images. Then the script itself will lead you there and reveal the ‘how’.

  You don’t even have to be clever. You can continue being dunce snails, so long as you are driven. And, competent, aware snails. Because, once you have set the goal, the script could just shock you. You might think that everything is disastrous. Whereas, in fact, old stuff you no longer need is being cleared out of your reality, so that the free space can be filled with beautiful, new things.

  It is quite possible that events in the script will unfold as if ‘everything is falling apart at the seams’. And then, awareness will serve you very well so that you can apply the principle of advantage. Acting in accordance with this principle, you not only avoid getting in the way of the script, you move toward the goal more quickly because in the moment of seeking the advantage, you detach yourself from your habitual “harmful” script and jump to an “advantageous” film roll. Even without the plait. If you carry out the advantage method using the plait as well, you will move even better and even faster.

  And beyond that, you’ll no longer be snails, but fireflies, the living heroes of a motion picture. Tracking advantage is one of the means of awakening. No event should hook you, but it should make you alert, and serve as a call to wake-up. Your task is to wake up in time, see reality and then compose reality.

  Previously: the moment something is wrong, instantly, “Aaaargh!” You wave your hands about and stamp your feet!

  Now: the moment something is wrong, you exclaim (to yourself or aloud, as you like): “Advantage!”.

  And from now on — allow the world to do something nice for you, to help you, to bring you closer to your goal.

  This naturally does not mean that you must become the very epitome of Allowing and bend over backwards for all and sundry. Of course, not everything carries an advantage and it isn’t always appropriate to allow and agree to certain things. Don’t worry, you will be able to make an adequate decision whether to allow something into your life or not because you’ll be in a competent state, i.e. I see myself and I see reality.

  In your normal state, how do you respond? Either you are up in arms, or you automatically obey. You respond in both cases non-consciously, just following the script. The difference in the advantage method is that you make an informed choice, fully present, and hence, walk into a frozen movie as an animated character, at the same time as feigning lifelessness.

  The advantage principle is everything in one vial: tracking, imitation, being present, and composing reality. Performing the method, you track yourself, you track reality and set a course, which the next frame will follow. Seeking the advantage is imitation in its purest form; you are still following
the script, but you are doing it intentionally and consciously.

  Note that when you track the advantage, you need to look at reality askance. Nobody suspects anything, neither the script nor those around you. You, like all dormant beings, diligently play your role and carry out your daily obligations, at the same time observing what is happening out of the corner of your eye. You are fully present, without giving away your presence. This is exactly what is needed. And it is very important to remain undetected as if nothing had anything to do with you. Why?

  Have you already forgotten why? Honestly! I explained it to you before. I am going to repeat it many times yet though. Behaving as if nothing had anything to do with you is the fundamental principle of ‘a live stroll through a movie’. Firstly, you don’t give away your presence, so that those around you won’t treat you with wariness and suspicion. Pretend to be asleep.

  Secondly, do not act in the same direct manner as you are used to, that is, grabbing reality by the scruff of the neck, battling with the events and characters of the current frame, and as a result, plunging back into the script, as in a dream. You are strolling live through a film when your attention is present, and you propel the upcoming frame with your intention and change the film roll. But what intention is that? The most important thing is that it’s outer intention! By looking askance and staying as if nothing had anything to do with you, you activate the outer intention centre.

  The script

  Hello again, hello again, my fit-for-nothing creatures! You are so good-for-nothing and nasty because you have such a tendency to see more harm than good in life. But everything can be put right. Those who seek the advantage find it and become advantageous themselves.