WHAT'S THIS?

A dictionary of terms as they are used and redefined by Elias


 
 

Automatic response

The term automatic response refers to an action which is performed without thought and without conscious attention. However, this does not mean that it is exactly unconscious, because according to Elias unconscious does not exist.

Rather than that, he says that people are simply not paying attention to what they are doing and therefore they are acting mostly automatic. This is also the reason why Elias often jokingly says that we are living on auto-pilot with the pilot's seat unoccupied.

What is important is that the automatic responses are always influenced by beliefs. Noticing the influence of beliefs is an element of the shift.

**Session #1252**:

ELIAS: For, throughout your day you express many, many actions, and you are moving in what you term to be automatic pilot. You are NOT paying attention to what you are expressing, what you are doing.

The significance of this paying attention in mundane, what you term to be insignificant actions throughout your day is that the influence of those beliefs in association with your actions in each day are very often the same beliefs that influence what you view as significant events.


The point in recognizing those automatic responses and the influencing beliefs, is that as long as they remain automatic (and therefore unnoticed), they are limiting and they are basically a denial of choice.

**Session #819**:

ELIAS: You hold many choices. If you engage merely the automatic response, you eliminate all other choices, and you focus your attention merely on one choice which is automatic, and you limit your perception.

Let me express to you, another individual may create a choice, an action, and you may be interactive with that individual, and in relation to your beliefs, you assess that the action of the other individual is wrong.

Now; that is an automatic response. Without recognizing that as an automatic response, you narrow your perception. You allow for no other choice.



More Quotes:

**Session #1233:**

ELIAS: Correct. But it is significant that you continue to allow yourself to be paying attention to your own communications and recognize what your responses are to other individuals in relation to their responses, for this offers you the opportunity to be more familiar with you and what motivates your responses within yourself. In recognizing those motivations through the influence of your beliefs, you also offer yourself the freedom of choice, for you are not locked into these automatic responses. You may continue to offer yourself the freedom of your expressions without concerning yourself with other individual’s perceptions.



See also:



Contributors/Discussion:

 
2006-08-12 14:41 • Link meInfoDiffEdit [Log in]