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Welcome to the 1st Seth Excerpts page
of Seth Quotes.ParadiseNow.net:
“The Nature of Personal Reality”
channelled by Jane Roberts

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Excerpts (part 1) from

The Nature of Personal Reality

(Note: I copied out so much from this book that I didn't indicate page numbers consistently before p. 157. In any event, I am reasonably certain that the quotes are sequential...)

You cannot escape your own attitudes, for they will form the nature of what you see. Quite literally you see what you want to see; and you see your own thoughts and emotional attitudes materialized in physical form. If changes are to occur, they must be mental and psychic changes. These will be reflected in your environment. Negative, distrustful, fearful, or degrading attitudes toward anyone work against the self.

Telepathy operates constantly. If you continually expect an individual to behave in a particular manner, then you are constantly sending him telepathic suggestions that he will do so. Each individual reacts to suggestion. According to the specific conditions existing at the time, such an individual will to some extent or another act according to the mass suggestions he receives.

These mass suggestions include not only those given to him by others, both verbally and telepathically, but also those he has given to himself, both in the waking and dream states. If an individual is in a state of despondency, this is because he has already become prey to negative suggestions of his own and others...

There are obviously ways in which you mold your own conditions, protect yourself from your own negative suggestions and those of others. You must learn to erase a negative thought or picture by replacing it with its opposite.

What you see in others is the materialization-the projection of what you think you are-not necessarily, however, of what you are. For example, if others seem deceitful to you, it is because you deceive yourself, and then project this outward upon others.

...If an individual sees only evil and desolation in the physical world, it is because he is obsessed with evil and desolation and projects them outward, and closes his eyes to all else. If you want to know what you think of yourself, then ask yourself what you think of others, and you will find your answer.

...and all of this without his realizing his basic concept of himself, and without recognizing that he projects his feared weaknesses outward unto others.

True self-knowledge is indispensable for health or vitality. The recognition of the truth about the self simply means that you must first discover what you think about yourself, subconsciously. If it is a good image, build upon it. If it is a poor one, recognize it as only the opinion you have held of yourself and not as an absolute state.

...remember to recognize resentment when he feels it, and then to realize that resentment can be dismissed. The initial recognition must be made, however. Then have him imagine plucking out the resentment by the roots and replacing it with a positive feeling. But he must imagine the plucking-out process.

This is the difference between repression and positive action. In repression the resentment is shoved beneath and ignored. With our method it is recognized, imaginatively plucked out as being undesirable, and replaced by the thought of peace and constructive energy.

If desire for health leads instead to an emphasis upon symptoms to be overcome, you would be better off to avoid all thoughts of health or illness and concentrate in other directions, such as work. Such an emphasis can lead to a focus upon obstacles that stand in the way, and this reinforces the negative condition.

People react to negative suggestions only when their own frame of mind is negative. Then we close ourselves off from the constructive energies we need.

You are a multidimensional personality, and within you lies all the knowledge about yourself, your challenges and problems, that you will ever need to know. Others can help you in their own way... But my mission is to remind you of the incredible power within your own being, and to encourage you to recognize and use it.

...Ideas have an electromagnetic reality. Beliefs are strong ideas about the nature of reality.

(later: Your thoughts have a very definite vital reality. Beliefs are thoughts reinforced by imagination and emotion concerning the nature of your reality.)

Ideas generate emotion. Like attracts like, so similar ideas group about each other and you accept those that fit in with your particular "system" of ideas.

112
Ideas represent your psychic intent. They generate emotion and imagination. These activate the interior patterns. They are the motive force of action, the means by which all interior events are exteriorized. They are energy formed and directed, formulations of interior and exterior patterns of reality. They are a part of the creative force from which all realities spring. ... Imagination and emotion are the most concentrated forms of energy that you possess as physical creatures. Any strong emotion carries within far more energy than, say, that required to send a rocket to the moon.

You are a sender and a receiver. Because ideas have an electromagnetic reality, beliefs, because of their intensity (see above) radiate strongly. Due to the organizing nature of your own psychological nature, similar beliefs congregate, and you will readily accept those with which you already agree...

Limiting ideas therefore predispose you to accept others of a similar nature. Exuberant ideas of freedom, spontaneity and joy automatically collect others of their kind also. There is a constant interplay between yourself and others in the exchange of ideas, both telepathically and on a conscious level.

This interchange follows, again, your conscious beliefs... You react only to those telepathic messages that fit in with your conscious ideas about yourself and your reality.

... the conscious mind is itself spontaneous. It enjoys playing with its own contents, so I am not here recommending a type of stern mental discipline in which you examine yourself at every moment.

Telepathic communication is constant. This is usually at an unconscious level merely because your conscious mind is in a state of becoming... As an example, if your conscious ideas are relatively positive you will react to telepathically received information of a similar nature, even if you do so on an unconscious level. ....A family... can constantly reinforce its joy, gaiety, and spontaneity by concentrating on ides of vitality, strength and creativity; or it can let half of its energy slip away by reinforcing resentments, angers and thoughts of doubt and failure.

You make your own reality.

You get what you concentrate upon. There is no other main rule.

You will also react... to inner information at an unconscious level that is ... "collected" under the organization of your quite conscious concepts concerning existence in general, and your own in particular. So you are locked into physical situations that are corroborated by the great evidence of sense data...

Core beliefs ... strong ideas about your own existence. Many other subsidiary beliefs, that earlier seemed separate from each other, should now appear quite clearly as being offshoots of core beliefs. Once the core belief is understood to be a false one, the others will fall away

It is the core belief which is strong enough to so focus your perception that you perceive from the physical world only those events that correlate with it. It is also the strength of the core belief that draws up from the vast bank of inner knowledge only those events that seem to fit within its organization.

I did not want to imply that you make a list of specifically negative ideas, however. IT IS OF SUPREME IMPORTANCE THAT YOU RECOGNIZE THE EXISTENCE OF JOYFUL BELIEFS, AND TAKE INTO CONSIDERATION THOSE ELEMENTS OF YOUR OWN EXPERIENCE WITH WHICH YOU HAVE HAD SUCCESS.

I WANT YOU TO CAPTURE (compare p. 88) THAT FEELING OF ACCOMPLISHMENT, AND TO TRANSLATE OR TRANSFER IT, TO AREAS IN WHICH YOU HAVE HAD DIFFICULTY. BUT YOU MUST REMEMBER THAT THE IDEAS EXIST FIRST AND THE EXPERIENCE PHYSICALLY FOLLOWS.

...here you become involved with one of the most meaningful aspects of the nature of personal reality, as you test your thoughts against what seems to be. There may be a time before you learn how to change your thoughts effectively, but you are engaged in a basic meaningful endeavor.

The truth is then that you form your reality directly. You react consciously and unconsciously to your beliefs. You collect from the physical universe, and the interior one, data that seems to correlate with your beliefs.

Believe, then, that you are a being unlimited by nature, born into flesh to materialize as best you can the great joy and spontaneity of your nature.

Core beliefs are those about which you build your life. You are consciously aware of these...

Data that seems unrelated to this core belief is then not assimilated but thrown into the corners of your mind, unused, and you are denied the value of the information. ... inactive material. This information will not be a part of the organized structure of your usual thoughts.

A core belief is invisible only when you think of it as a fact of life, and not as a belief about life...

... you must become aware of your own structures. Build them up or tear them down, but do not allow yourself to become blind to the furniture of your own mind... it will help you, in fact, if you think of your own beliefs as furniture that can be rearranged, changed, renewed, completely discarded or replaced. Your ideas are yours. They should not control you... Imagine yourself then rearranging this furniture. Images of particular pieces will come clearly to you. Ask yourself what ideas these pieces represent. See how well the tables fit together. Open up the drawers inside.

You must understand that these are not simply dead ideas, like debris, within your mind. They are psychic matter. In a sense then they are alive. They group themselves like cells, protecting their own validity and identity.

You feed them, figuratively speaking, with like ideas.

Information does not exist by itself. Connected with it is the consciousness of all those who understand it, perceive it or originate it. ... the consciousness that held, or holds, or will hold the information attracts it like a magnet... The information itself wants to move toward consciousness. It is not dead or inert. It is not something you grab for, it is also something that wants to be grabbed, and so it gravitates to those who seek it.

Your consciousness attracts the consciousness that is already connected with the material.

... the emergence of the inner self, through art, into the physical universe.

Imagination is one of the motivating agencies that helps transform your beliefs into physical experience. It is vital therefore that you understand the interrelationship between ideas and imagination. In order to dislodge unsuitable beliefs and establish new ones, you must learn to use your imagination to move concepts in and out of your mind. The proper use of imagination can then propel ideas in the directions you desire.

Largely, but not completely, your imagination follows your beliefs, as do your emotions. One of the most hampering beliefs of all is the idea that the clues to current behavior are buried and usually inaccessible. This belief itself closes to you the contents of your own conscious mind and prevents you from looking there for the answers that are available.

[to Rob:] Now at various times you made those conscious choices. They escaped your notice but they existed as conscious points of awareness and choice.

You should ...become... aware, and consciously and alertly aware, of the beneficial ideas and their importance in your lives.

IT IS VITAL THAT YOU REALIZE YOU ARE WORKING WITH BELIEFS IN YOUR MIND - THAT THE REAL WORK IS DONE THERE IN THE MIND - AND NOT LOOK FOR IMMEDIATE PHYSICAL RESULTS.

THEY WILL FOLLOW AS SURELY AND CERTAINLY AS THE "BAD" RESULTS FOLLOWED, AND THIS MUST BE A BELIEF: THAT THE GOOD RESULTS WILL COME. BUT THE REAL WORK IS DONE IN THE MIND. IF YOU DO THE WORK THEN YOU CAN REST ASSURED OF THE RESULTS, BUT YOU MUST NOT CHECK CONSTANTLY FOR THEM.

Your emotions and your imagination both follow your belief. When the belief vanishes then the same emotional context is no longer entertained, and your imagination turns in other directions.

Quite deliberately you use your conscious mind playfully,
....game... in which for a time you completely ignore what seems to be in physical terms and "pretend" that what you really want is real.

If you are poor, you purposely pretend that you have all you need financially. Imagine how you will spend your money. If you are ill, imagine playfully that you are cured. See yourself doing what you would do. If you cannot communicate with others, imagine yourself doing so easily.

...As it took a while for the unsatisfactory beliefs to become materialized, so it may be a time before you see physical results; but the new ideas will take growth and change your experience as certainly as the old ones did. The process of imagining will also bring you face to face with other subsidiary ideas that may momentarily bring you up short. you may see where you held two quite conflicting ideas simultaneously, and with equal vigor. In such a case, you stalemated yourself... so you will try to be healthy and not healthy at the same time, or successful and not successful...

Feeling and conscious thought... actually go together but your conscious thinking largely determines your emotions, and not the other way round. Your beliefs generate the appropriate emotion that is implied. A long period of inner depression does not just come upon you. Your emotions do not betray you. Instead, over a period of time you have been consciously entertaining negative beliefs that then generated the strong feelings of despondency. As you think so you feel, and not the other way around.

... The belief in illness itself depends upon a belief in human unworthiness, guilt and imperfection, for example.

The mind does not just hold active beliefs. It contains many others in a passive state. They lie latent, ready to be focused upon and used; any of them can be brought to the fore when a conscious thought acts as a stimulus (this is why you should do the suggestions thing)

If you are focusing upon ideas of..., illness or lack,..., your conscious mind also holds latently concepts of health, vigor and abundance. If you divert your thoughts from the negative ideas to the positive ones, then your concentration will begin to alter the balance. The vast reservoir of energy and potential within you is called into action under the leadership of your conscious mind.

...your consciousness expands as you use it. You become "more" conscious as you exercise these (reasoning) faculties.

Conscious mind is a vehicle for the imagination in many ways. The greater its knowledge the further the reach of imagination...

The conscious mind is a vehicle for the expression of the soul in corporeal terms. It is your method of assessing temporal experience according to the beliefs that it holds about the nature of reality. It automatically causes the body to react in certain ways. I cannot say this often enough: Your beliefs follow your reality, your body and its condition, your personal relationships, your environment, and en masse your civilization and world... The conscious mind gives its orders and the inner self carries them out.

All of the powers of your inner self are set into activation as a result of your conscious beliefs. You have lost a sense of responsibility for your conscious thoughts because you have been taught that it is not what forms your life. You have been taught that regardless of your beliefs your are terrorized by unconscious conditioning. And as long as you hold that conscious belief you will experience it as reality.

Some of your beliefs originated in your childhood, but you are not at their mercy unless you believe that you are.

Because your imagination follows your beliefs you can find yourself in a vicious circle in which you constantly paint pictures in your mind that reinforce "negative" aspects in your life. The imaginative events generate appropriate emotions, which automatically bring about hormonal changes in your body or affect your behavior with others, or cause you to interpret events always in the light of your beliefs. And so daily experience will seem to justify what you believe more and more. The only way out is to become aware of your beliefs, aware of your own conscious thought, and to change your beliefs so that you bring them more in line with the kind of reality you want to experience. Imagination and emotion will then automatically come into play to reinforce the new beliefs.

The first important step is to realize that your beliefs about reality are just that - beliefs about reality and not necessarily attributes of reality. You must make a clear distinction between you and your beliefs. You must then realize that your ideas are physically materialized. What you believe to be true in your experience is true. To change the physical effect you must change the original belief-while being quite aware that for a time physical materializations of the old beliefs may still hold... however, your new beliefs will-and quickly-begin to show themselves in your experience. But you must not be concerned for their emergence, for this brings up the fear that the new ideas will not materialize, and so this negates your purpose.

Know that all events are mental and psychic first and that these will happen in physical terms, but do not keep watching yourself. Continue with the game [see above].

You are doing the same thing now constantly and automatically with whatever beliefs you have, and they are being as constantly and automatically translated. It is the separation of self from beliefs that is so important initially, however.

Examine all of your beliefs about yourself and the nature of reality; and one belief, if you let it, will lead you to another. Imagination and will power are never in conflict. Your beliefs may conflict, but your imagination will always follow your will power and your conscious thoughts and beliefs.

Example: you are overweight. ...tried diets to no avail. You follow what I have said so far. You change the belief. You say "because I believe I am overweight, I am, so I will think of myself at my ideal weight.

But you find that you still overeat. ... You may, for instance, find that you believe you are not worthy, and hence should not look attractive... you may find that you feel - and believe that your are - so vulnerable that you need the weight so people will think twice before they shove you around. In all of these cases the ideas will be conscious. You have entertained them often and your imagination and emotions are in league with them, and not in conflict.

People with like ideas reinforce each other's beliefs.

You are setting out to experience the most fulfilled reality that you can. To do this you have, hopefully, begun to examine your beliefs. See other people react to you in the new way. This is highly important because telepathically you are sending them interior messages. You are telling them that you are changing the conditions and behavior of your relationship. You are broadcasting your altered position. You must accept the idea completely, however, that your beliefs form your experience. Discard those beliefs that are not bringing you those effects you want. In the meantime you will often be in the position of telling yourself that something is true in the face of physical data that seems completely contradictory. You must realize that you are the one who produced that "physical evidence" that still faces you, and you did so through your beliefs. ... physical evidence will gradually begin to "prove" your new belief as faithfully as it did your old one.

You are mainly concerned now with physical orientation and the corporeal materialization of inner reality. Therefore the conscious mind holds in ready access the information that you require for effective day-to-day living. As soon as the need for such data - aid, information, or knowledge - arises, then it is immediately forthcoming unless your own conscious beliefs cause a barrier. It is because of (the concentrated focus) of your conscious mind that you can "tune into" the particular range of activity that is physical.

In your present life the conscious mind assesses physical reality and has behind it all the energy, power and ability of the inner self at its disposal. Any information that it requires will be available... The inner self sends to it only the information it asks for or feels necessary. To a very large extent then conscious beliefs act as great liberators of such inner data, or as inhibitors of it. The conscious mind is itself expanding and developing. It is not a thing. It learns through experience and through the effects of its behavior. The inner self brings about whatever results the conscious mind desires.

... [body?] is not cut off from the inner self. The inner self keeps the physical body alive even as it formed it. The miraculous constant translation of spirit into flesh is carried on with inexhaustible energy by these inner portions of being, but in all cases the inner self looks to the conscious mind for its assessment of the body's condition and reality, and forms the image in line with the conscious mind's beliefs. ...To change your body you change your beliefs, even in the face of physical data or evidence that conflicts.

You send a barrage of beliefs and instructions to the inner self that affect your physical image.

I will call... inner sound the sound of your thoughts within your own head. Inner sounds have an even greater effect than exterior ones upon your body. They affect the atoms and molecules that compose your cells. In many respects it is true that you speak your body, but the speaking is interior... The sound exists connected with but quite apart from the mental words you use in thinking. ...When you say, "I am tired," mentally you are not only giving silent messages to yourself - I say messages rather than message because the general statement is broken down; many portions of the body must be affected before you feel tired-but beside this the inner sound value of the messages automatically affects the body in just that way... The inner sound value of the countering suggestion automatically begins to refresh the body.

[poor vision:] You must discover the reason for the belief behind the physical poor function or nonfunction, and if this is done the condition will automatically clear up... Your muscles believe what you tell them about themselves. So does every other portion of your physical body

Each of the atoms and molecules that compose your body has its own reality in sound values that you do not hear physically. Each organ of your body then has its own unique sound value too. When there is something wrong the inner sounds are discordant. The inharmonious sounds have become a part of that portion of the body as a result of the inner sound of your own thought-beliefs. That is why it is vital that you not reinforce these inner sounds through repeating the same negative suggestions to yourself. Verbal suggestions are translated into inner sound. This passes through your body in somewhat the same way that some kinds of light do.

... [body] also has "structures" of sound, light, and electromagnetic properties that you do not perceive. These are all connected with the physical image that you know. Any physical disabilities show themselves in these other "structures" initially.

The sound, light, and electromagnetic patterns give strength and vitality to the physical form that you recognize. They are more mobile than the physical body, and even more susceptible to the changing pattern of your own thought and emotion.

...thoughts are translated into this inner sound, but thoughts always attempt to materialize themselves also. As such they are incipient images, collectors of energy. They build up their own embryonic form until it is in one way or another physically translated.

Mental images therefore are extremely powerful, combining inner sound and its effects with a clear mental picture which will seek physical form. Your imagination adds motivating and propelling power to such images, and so you will find that many of your beliefs are entertained by you in an inner visual manner. They will have mental pictures connected with them.

One such image may represent one particular belief or it may stand for several. As you make lists of your beliefs you will find some of these pictures coming into your mind. Look at them as you would a painting you have created. If you do not like what you see then quite consciously change the picture in your mind.

In quiet moments the word "O-O-O-O-O-M-M-M-M-M," said slowly, mentally or aloud, will be of benefit in toning up your general physical condition. The sounds contain within them a built-in impetus toward energy and well-being, as I will explain shortly.

A mental image... is composed of the same properties ... a pattern of internal sound with electromagnetic properties imbued with certain light values. In a sense, and a very real one, the mental image is incipient matter, and any structure so composed, combining the electromagnetic sound and light values, will automatically try to reproduce itself in physical existence, or materialization.

The atoms and molecules that compose your cells and your flesh, for instance, do not react to the physical sounds that you hear or the light patterns that your physical eyes perceive. s.108/9 ... The nerves are also composed of the same kind of interior structures as mentioned earlier: around, or rather from which, the physical nerves form. Here the exterior data is translated and broken down into inner terms. That is, it is decoded in terms of the internal sound, light, and electromagnetic patterns discussed before. It then becomes usable information, even in terms of the atoms and molecules that compose the cells. The physical lapse that occurs between an incoming message and its intended destination does not occur on these other levels. The "interior message" gets to its destination ahead of the physical one. ...Therefore the invisible body pattern, composed of its interior light, sound and electromagnetic properties, reacts first, and actually initiates the later physical response... before you see anything physically, you do so through these inner pathways. The interior perception activates the outside one. When you experience physical motion or activity,... or phenomena, you are becoming aware of the tail end of a long "series" of interior comprehensions. ...all exterior events, including your own bodies with their insides, all objects, all physical materializations, are the outside structures of ... ones that are composed of interior sound and invisible light, interwoven in electromagnetic patterns. Beneath temporal perception, then, each object and event exists in these terms, in patterns that interact with each other. On a physical level you seem to be separated from everything that is not yourself. This is not true... On the interior level... all happenings and objects are connected. A movement or change in one affects others. You will physically respond to and recognize some of this alteration, as in the example of the near accident. But whether or not you are consciously aware of such activity, it changes the interior environment of your body through these inner pathways.

Your own thoughts and beliefs, having the same kind of inner reality, also transform the interior environments of others. ... a physical event... was initially a mental one. It existed in this nontemporal reality then before, in your terms, it was physically materialized, perceived and reacted to. It was propelled from inner reality to outward reality through belief, emotion and imagination.

Ideas represent your psychic intent. They generate emotion and imagination. These activate the interior patterns. They are the motive force of action, the means by which all interior events are exteriorized. They are energy formed and directed, formulations of interior and exterior patterns of reality. They are a part of the creative force from which all realities spring. ... Imagination and emotion are the most concentrated forms of energy that you possess as physical creatures. Any strong emotion carries within far more energy than, say, that required to send a rocket to the moon.

Emotions, instead of propelling a physical rocket... send thoughts from this interior reality through the barrier between nonphysical and physical into the "objective" world-no small feat, and one that is constantly repeated.

...These invisible structures preceded the emergence of the physical body. They also exist after the body's death. While the condition of the body is directed by the conscious mind in life, then, the idea or mental pattern for the body existed before the conscious mind's connection with the physical brain.

The general framework, properties and characteristics of the body exist, therefore, before its formation... The conscious mind directs the so-called involuntary system of the body, and not the other way around. No idea slips insidiously past your awareness to affect your involuntary system unless it fits in with your own conscious beliefs. ...you will not be sick if you think you are well-but there may be other ideas that make you believe in the necessity for poor health. ... involuntary functions perfectly mirror your consciously held ideas and beliefs.

... the conscious mind is not any one event; it represents various portions of the inner self that "surface" at any given time [i.e. as the "ego"]

The form is... a mirror of beliefs, and will accurately materialize in flesh those ideas held by the conscious mind. That is one of the body's primary functions. A sick body is performing that function then, in its way, as well as a healthy body. It is your most intimate feedback system, changing with your thoughts and experience giving you in flesh the physical counterpart of your thought. So it is futile to become angry at a symptom... when it is presenting you with the corporeal replica of your own thought, as it was meant to do.

Your environment and your experience in the physical world also provide you with the same kind of feedback. It is just as useless to berate your environment or your experience in it as it is to deride your body, for the same reasons.

You are... in physical existence using your body as a medium for learning and expression... later we will discuss other kinds of existence in which you are also involved; and these to some extent color your intents and purposes in physical life as you now understand it.

If all of your beliefs, not just your "fortunate" ones, were not materialized, you would never thoroughly understand on a physical level that your ideas create reality. If only your "positive" beliefs were materialized then you would never clearly comprehend the power of your thought, for you would not completely experience its physical results.

[before physical birth] you tune yourself into a highly specific dimension of reality. You form a physical structure that will have existence within that intensely concentrated area, ... that will come alive within those "frequencies". ... the other portions can be called the inner self. Now all of this inner self cannot become expressed even with its connection with the brain, since the brain must sift perception through the physical apparatus... Therefore a seeming division occurs (p. 118), in which a portion of the invisible conscious mind is connected with the physical brain, and a portion of it is free of that connection. That part forms what you think of as the involuntary system of the body... There is constant interplay and communication between the areas of consciousness that are connected to the brain and those that are not. The "deeper" purposes of the consciousness involved "circulate", sometimes arising in the awareness that is joined with the brain. Information coming from those deeper sources of the self, reaching the areas connected to the brain, will be interpreted according to the beliefs of that most physically focused segment of the self. To some degree, such inner data will be colored by the current beliefs of that part of the self most directly confronting the physical world. Those beliefs, however, are also constantly being examined by the inner self.

[about believing that hearing will fade after a certain time of life:]

Functions in this particular regard are habits. You simply forget how to hear properly, following your belief. All of the minute manipulations necessary to hearing are unconsciously repressed. The actual physical deterioration then does indeed follow... the belief would work to insure the materialization of that state. ... You must understand that your ideas and thoughts do not exist as phantoms or shadow images without substance. They are electromagnetic realities. They affect your physical being and they are automatically translated by your nervous system into the stuff of your flesh and of your experience... All energy at the inner self's disposal is then concentrated to bring about the results asked for by the conscious mind... When you rail against an unfavorable environment or a situation or condition, basically you are not acting independently, but almost blindly reacting. You are reacting to events that seem to happen to you, and always in response to a situation.

To act in an independent manner, you must begin to initiate action that you want to occur physically by creating it in your own being.

This is done by combining belief, emotion and imagination, and forming them into a mental picture of the desired physical result. Of course, the wanted result is not yet physical or you would not need to create it, so it does no good to say your physical experience seems to contradict what you are trying to do. (p. 121)

Ideas and beliefs do feed upon themselves. There is within them a built-in impetus toward growth, development and fulfillment.

Since it is the beliefs of the conscious mind that regulate the involuntary bodily motions and the entire physical system, then contradictory beliefs obviously set up adverse physical reactions and imbalances.

[....a case in point, strongly contradictory beliefs:]

His beliefs in his unworthiness prevented him from using his abilities, or even pursuing a course of effective action. ..a situation in which an individual, through beliefs, put his power and energy literally beside himself. ... His chemical makeup varied considerably.

... a method of cure, in which portions of each conflicting side of the personality break off to form a clearer psychological structure which can communicate with the other two, act as a referee, and reconcile the opposing beliefs held by each.

This is done many times without the main personality realizing what is really going on.

In all cases of this nature... the problem is one of unassimilated beliefs. ... such beliefs can be expressed through various parts of the body. ... a system of medicine that largely deals with symptoms only encourages a patient to project such beliefs on new organs, ..after already sacrificing others in operations.

While the most basic work must be done by the individual, help is always available from a variety of sources, both within and without. You will literally interpret and use almost any data that comes to you as helpful, and it will be highly effective-unless your beliefs lead you to think, perhaps, that everyone is against you, or that you are beyond help, or that you do not deserve it. (which I consider the most hampering beliefs). Other such ideas can also close you off from help, of course, but you will instinctively look for it and use it when possible.

The stuff of the body should not be considered as some metaphysical result, then, but as a living gestalt of responsive flesh. Your body is composed of other living entities, in other words. Though you organize this living material it has its own right to fulfillment and existence... Your perception is merely that which you are aware of. Even the atoms and molecules have their own fine vision and appreciate their environment in their own way. There is no difference between the energy that shapes your ideas and the energy that grows a flower, or that heals your finger when you burn it. The soul does not exist apart from nature.

The body is often closer to the soul than the mind is because it automatically grows as a flower does, trusting its nature.

Physical existence is valuable for many reasons, one being that the flesh is so responsive to thought and yet so resilient. There are built-in guidelines so that the body consciousness itself, while mirroring your negative images at times, will also automatically struggle against them. ... Thoughts interact with the body and become part of it as viruses do. ... Put simply, they... can be regarded as invisible viruses, carriers, sparks setting off reactions not only within the body but the entire physical system as you know it. Your thoughts are as natural as the cells... and as real. They interact with one another as viruses do. While you are in this reality there is no division between the mental, the spiritual, and the physical. If you think there is, then you do not sufficiently understand the spirituality of the flesh or the physical reality of your thought... All portions of the body's reality are versions in flesh of the soul's reality, even as all segments of the exterior universe mirror an internal one... Physical phenomena is only a portion of what nature is, and all realities are natural.

In your terms, probabilities are extensions and variations on the growth principle that is quite obvious in your daily reality.

[Cells:] Each cell remembers its past though all of its parts have been and are being continually replaced.

Think of your thoughts... as living electromagnetic cells, differing from the physical cells in your body only in the nature of their materialization. Your thoughts direct the overall functioning of your body's cells, even though you do not consciously know how those cells operate. That work is unconscious.

Each physical cell is in its way a miniature brain, with memory of all of its personal experiences and of its relationship with other cells, and with the body as a whole. In your terms this means that each cell operates with an innate picture of the body's entire history-past, present, and future.

Now this picture is ever-changing and mobile. An alteration in just one cell is instantly noted by the body consciousness (the combined consciousness of the cells), and the future effect perceived. This information is used together with all other data from the body, and a prediction made. (p.145)

This body prediction is then assessed, and on more levels than it is possible for me to explain. Briefly, the picture is "shown" in the invisible arena where flesh and spirit meet. This arena is not a place, of course, but an inner state of gestalt consciousness. The state is brought about through certain interactions that occur deep within the body. Magnetic structures are formed. They are created on a physical level through certain activations, of the nerves in which the normal patterns are jumped, so to speak, and images are formed. The nerves and the cellular structures at their tips take pictures. These are all assembled and used to form the larger picture of the body's condition.

These are not images as you think of them but highly coded information, electromagnetically imprinted ... ..they cannot be perceived except by the body. But this procedure is so far superior to anything that you know that the body, therefore, actually takes precognitive pictures of its future condition-as if the body situation at the time were projected into the future.

There is a built-in equilibrium to some extent. The body is so responsive to conscious thought that it has its own innate system of self-preservation and its own guiding image of fulfillment.

["Past" events:) Your conscious thoughts and habits regulate which of them will intermix into the maelstrom of the present.

You consciously give the signals for reaction. ...Past events do not intrude in this manner unless they are beckoned by the conscious expectations and thoughts that exist within your mind. Those unconscious memories will be activated according to your current beliefs. You will be replenished and renewed as your thoughts motivate joyful body sensations and physical events, or you will be depressed as you bring into your awareness unpleasant body happenings... constant unpleasant thoughts put the body into a state of turmoil that is "unrealistic", and, in turn, force it to reactivate such old patterns.

At one level of your being there is a common ground where body consciousness merges with that higher consciousness from which your own identity springs. This is the ground of your being where soul and flesh meet, both in time and out of it.

You may have dreams urging you to move in such and such a direction, or pointing out areas in which corrections should be made. Often such dreams bring about behavior changes whether or not you remember them in the morning. You may request dreams in which proper direction is given, and you will receive them. ... You must remember that ideas are as alive as the cells within your hand. ... when good thoughts from an individual's present life are activated, they draw upon similar ones from his or her reincarnational personalities.

[Einstein: mass and energy are equivalent to each other-when one is "destroyed" the other is "created"].

A simple experiment with self-explanatory results: Think of a sad event of your life. Similar feelings will soon follow, and with them memories of other such unpleasant episodes strung together through association. Scenes, odors, words, perhaps half-forgotten, will suddenly come upon you with new freshness.

Your thoughts will activate the appropriate feelings. Beneath your awareness, however, they will also trigger the cells' everpresent memory imprints of stimuli received when those events occurred. There is, to some extent now, a cellular memory playback-and on the part of the entire body, the recognition of its state at that time.

If you pursue such sorrowful thoughts persistently you are reactivating that body condition. Think of one of the most pleasant events that ever happened to you and the reverse will be true, but the process is the same. This time the associated memories are pleasant, and the body changes accordingly.

Remember, these mental associations are living things. They are formations of energy assembled into invisible structures, through processes quite as valid and complicated as the organization of any group of cells. Comparing them with cells, they are of briefer duration, generally speaking, though under certain conditions this does not apply. But your thoughts form structures as real as the cells. Their composition is different in that no solidity is involved in your terms.

As living cells have a structure, react to stimuli and ... according to their own classification, so do thoughts. Thoughts thrive on association. They magnetically attract others like themselves, and like some strange microscopic animals they repel their "enemies", or other thoughts that are threatening to their own survival.

Using this analogy, your mental and emotional life forms a framework composed of such structures, and these act directly upon the cells of your physical body.

Imagine the successive thoughts and feelings that you possess. When you feel weak you are weak. When you feel joyful your body benefits and becomes stronger. (p. 157) So inhibiting what you consider as negative thoughts, or assuming that they are so terrible, is no answer.

Your beliefs about what is desirable and what is not, what is good and what is evil, cannot be divorced from the condition of your body. Your own ideas of values can help you achieve good health or bring about disease, can bring into your experience success or failure, happiness or sadness. Yet each of you will interpret that last remark in line with your own value system. You will have definite ideas about what success or failure means, or what good or evil is.

Your own value system then is built up of your beliefs about reality, and those beliefs form your experience. Suppose you believe that to be "good" you must try to be perfect... Trying to be perfect all the time can be far more than a nuisance: It can be disastrous because of your misunderstanding.

The word "perfect" holds many pitfalls. In the first place it presupposes something completed and done beyond change, and so beyond motion, further development, or creativity. ... Your thoughts are perfectly themselves. Left alone, they come and go.

"Negative thoughts": You with your conscious mind are to discriminate among your thoughts as to which ones you want to form into your system of beliefs, but in so doing you are not to pretend blindness. You may at times wish that a rainy day were a sunny one, but you do not stand at the window and deny that the rain is falling, or that the air is cold and the sky dark.

Because you accept the rain as a present reality does not mean, either, that you must believe that all days are stormy, and make that obvious misconception a part of your beliefs about reality. So you do not have to pretend that a "dark" thought doesn't exist. (p. 159)

Some are afraid of certain thoughts, and so are oblivious to their beauty and their place in mental life.

Since you have all kinds of thoughts there are reasons for having them, as you have all kinds of geography. Within your reality it is as foolish to deny the existence of certain thoughts as it would be, say, to pretend that deserts do not exist. In following such a course you deny dimensions of experience and diminish your reality. This does not mean that you have to collect what you think of as negative thoughts, any more that it means that you should spend a month in a desert if you do not like them. It does mean that within nature as you understand it, nothing is meaningless or to be pretended out of existence.

Usually if you regard a thought as bad or beneath you, or if you are ashamed of it, then you try to deny it, stop its motion and hold it back. You cannot restrain energy, although you may think you can. You simply collect it, whereupon it grows, seeking its fulfillment.

161
... I simply want to point out the difference between healthy natural aggressiveness, and the explosive, distorted emergence of repressed aggression....areas in which you strongly repress your thoughts, for many energy blockages will be found there.

... man began to believe in demons when he started to feel a sense of guilt. The guilt itself arose with the birth of compassion.

162
The birth of a conscious mind, as you think of it, meant that the species took upon itself free will.

164
Guilt is the other side of compassion. Its original purpose was to enable you to empathize on an aware level with yourselves and other members of creaturehood, so that you could consciously control what was previously handled on a biological level alone. Guilt in that respect therefore had a strong natural basis, and when it is perverted, misused or misunderstood, it has that great terrifying energy of any runaway basic phenomenon.

165
... in your fear of negative thoughts you often attempt to deny all normal aggressiveness, and at the first glimpse of it bring up your mental antibodies prepared for action. In so doing you try to repudiate the validity of your own experience. If you do not feel your individual reality, then you can never realize that you form it, and so can change it. It is this denial of experience, and the energy blockages involved, that build up the accumulation of unnecessary "unnatural" guilt. The body itself cannot understand these blocked messages, and cries out to express its own corporeal knowledge of the moment as it experiences it. You mentally shout in such situations that you do not feel what you feel.

Over a period of time, the conscious mind, because of its position, can override the body's messages. Yet the backed-up accumulation of energy will seek outlet. The smallest, most innocent symbol for the repressed material may then bring about behavior on your part that seems out of all proportion to the stimulus.

166
... You try to be so good precisely because you believe you are so bad and unworthy.

167
Generally speaking, you are here to expand your consciousness, to learn the ways of creativity as directed through conscious thought. The aware mind can change its beliefs, and so to a large extent it can alter its bodily experience.

Thou shalt not kill more than is needed for thy physical sustenance.

Thou shalt not violate ... leeway had to be left for your own interpretation.

An outright lie may or may not be a violation... Having normal aggressive thoughts is not a violation.

Doing violence to your body, or another's, is a violation. Doing violence to the spirit of another is a violation-but... because you are conscious beings the interpretations are yours.

Killing while protecting your own body from death at the hands of another through immediate contact is a violation. Whether or not any justification seems apparent, the violation exists... You could counter such an attack in several ways that do not involve killing. You would not be in such a hypothetical situation to begin with unless violent thoughts of your own, faced or unfaced, had attracted it to you. ... aggressive-forceful, active, mental or spoken-commands for peace could save your life in such a case.

When you consider aggressive thoughts wrong, using this analogy, you do not even begin to allow the system to clear itself. Instead you shut up the "poisons" inside.

As an accumulation would occur in the flesh, so the same thing might happen in your mental experience. Physically you could end up with a very serious condition; and mentally and emotionally such a clamping down on natural forces can result in "diseased" idea structures that are isolated from other more healthy concepts. These can be like growths-not lacking oxygen... but free access and flow with other portions of your conscious experience.

170
Controls were needed lest the conscious mind, denied full use of the animals' innate taboos, run away with itself. Guilt, natural guilt, depends upon memory then.

The collection of unrecognized artificial guilts, built up through the centuries, has led to such an accumulation of repressed energy that its release has resulted in violent action.

In those terms overpopulation is a violation. In the case of both war and overgrowth, the species has ignored its natural guilt.

172
Many of your problems result from the fact that you do not accept the responsibility of your own consciousness. It is meant to assess the reality that is unconsciously formed in direct replica of your thoughts and expectations.

When you do not embrace this conscious knowledge, but refuse it, you are not using one of the finest "tools" ever created by your species, and you are to a large extent denying your birthright and heritage.

When this happens, the species by default must fall back upon vestiges of old instincts-that were not geared to operate in conjunction with a conscious reasoning mind, and do not comprehend your experience; that finds your "moment of reflection" an impertinent denial of impulse. So man loses full use of the animals' regulated, graceful instinct, and yet denies the conscious and emotional discrimination given him instead.

172
The "demons", your projections, are then placed upon a national enemy, or the leader of another race; sometimes whole masses of population will project upon other large groups the images of their own unfaced frustrations. Even in Augustus you find the hero and the villain, separate and diversified. As a man can be so divided, so can a nation and a world. So can a species... so... can a family be so divided, and one member always appear as a hero and one the villain or the demon.

173
Natural guilt is a creative mechanism, meant to serve as a conscious spur in the solving of problems that, in your terms, no other animals ever had. By taking advantage of it you leap still further through unknown frontiers, and break through into dimensions of awareness that were always latent since the birth of the conscious mind.

Natural guilt, followed, is a wise guide that brings along with it not only biological integrity, but triggers within consciousness aspects of activity that must otherwise remain closed.

175 ["natural grace":]
You can ignore it. You can hold beliefs that blind you to its existence. You will still be graced but unable to perceive your own uniqueness and integrity, and blind also to other attributes with which you are automatically gifted.

176
The dog may remember where he saw his master last, but without being able to summon the memory, and operating without the kind of mental associations that you use. His connections will be of a more biological nature and will not provide the leeway, that your own mental conditions allow you.

With the large freedom provided by the conscious mind, however, man could stray from that great inner joy of being, forget it, disbelieve in it, or use his free will to deny its existence.

! When man did not violate, he was aware of his own state of grace. When he violated, it fell back into cellular awareness, as with the animals, but he felt consciously cut off from it and denied.

The simplicity of natural guilt does not lead to what you think of as conscience, yet conscience is also dependent upon that moment of reflection that in a large measure sets you apart from the animals. Conscience, as you think of it, is caused by a dilemma and a misunderstanding of the conditions set upon your physical existence. Conscience arose with the emergence of artificial guilt.

177
The conscious mind is a maker of distinctions. It brings to the surface of awareness whole gestalts of previously unconscious material, then assembles and organized it in ever-changing form. Through purposeful focus, a literally infinite amount of such data can be unconsciously sorted; then only the desired elements will emerge... ...the aware mind's capacity to play upon, mix and merge, and rearrange perception and experience.

178
In a simultaneous time, punishment makes no sense. The punishment as an event, and the event for which you were being punished, exist at once; and since there is no past, present and future, you could just as well say that the punishment came first.

[reincarnation:] The theory is a conscious-mind interpretation in linear terms. On the one hand it is highly distorted. On the other hand it is a creative interpretation, as the conscious mind plays with reality as it understands here. But in the terms used here there is no karma to be paid off as punishment unless you believe there are crimes for which you must pay.

In larger terms there is no cause and effect either, though these are root assumptions in your reality... we return once more to that moment of reflection, for it is here that both causes and effects first appear. ...animals... each in its own degree - far less than yours - shows that reflection. In some, for all intents and purposes, it does not exist at all. Yet it is there, latent.

180
These multiple existences, ...are simultaneous and open-ended. In your terms the conscious mind is growing toward a realization of the part it has to play in such multidimensional reality. It is enough that you understand your part in this existence. When you fully comprehend that you form what you think of as your current reality, all else will fall into place.

Your beliefs, thoughts and feelings are instantly materialized physically. Their earthly reality occurs simultaneously with their inception, but in the world of time lapses between appear to occur. So I say one causes the other, and I use those terms to help you understand, but all are at once. So are your multiple lives occurring as the immediate realization of your being in the natural extension of its many-faceted abilities.

"At once" does not imply a finished state of perfection nor a cosmic situation in which all things have been done, for all things are still happening. You are still happening-but both present and future selves; and your past self is still undergoing what you think is done. Moreover, it is experiencing events that you do not recall, that your linear-attuned consciousness cannot perceive on that level.

...youth can be physically "prolonged" far beyond its present duration...

(like breath) Just so your lives go in and out of you-you and yet not you. And a portion of you, while letting them all go, remembers them and knows their journey. ... So the lives you have lived are not you, while they are of you.

181
Close your eyes. Think of your breaths as lives, and you the entity through which they have passed and are passing. Then you will feel your state of grace, and all artificial guilts will be meaningless. None of this negates the supreme and utter integrity of your individuality, for you are as well the individual through whom the lives flow, and the unique lives that are expressed through you.

As your breath leaves you and becomes part of the world, free, so do your lives leave you and continue to exist in your terms. You cannot confine a personality that you "were" to a particular century that is finished and deny it other fulfillments, for even now it exists and has fresh experience.

182
Think of the greater you-call it the entity if you want to-as forming a psychic structure quite as real as your physical one, but composed of many selves. As each cell of your body has its position within your corporeal space and boundaries, so each self within the entity is aware of its own "time" and dimension of activity. The body is a temporal structure. The cells, however, while a part of this body, are not aware of the entire dimension in which your consciousness dwells. They do not perceive all of the elements that are available even in three-dimensional experience, yet your present consciousness-seemingly so much more sophisticated-physically rests upon cellular awareness.

So the entity or "greater" psychic structure of which you are a part is aware of a much larger dimension of activity than you are, yet in the same way its more sophisticated consciousness rests upon your own, and one is necessary to the other.

In physical life there is a lapse while messages leap the nerve ends (see 625th session in Chapter Five). In other terms and on other levels, this was represented in that "moment of reflection" that took place as man's consciousness emerged that of the animals.

In still other terms and at different levels this lapse occurs-this moment of reflection extends itself-as the self leaps clear of physical form (even as the cell at one time deserts the body).

In this regard now, and for the sake of our analogy only, think of the life of the self as one message leaping across the nerve cells of a multidimensional structure-again, as real as your body-and consider it also as a greater "moment of reflection" on the part of such a many-sided personality.

I make these analogies because they are pertinent, yet I am aware that they can make you feel small or fear for your identity. You are more than a message, say, passing through the vast reaches of a superself. You are not lost in the universe... such analogies can... conjure up within your imagination some feeling of your intimate relationship with all other reality. To some extent, the feeling of grace is your emotional recognition of the necessity, purpose and freedom, the innate appreciation, of your rightness and your place in existence.

Remember also, in your terms now, the great gulf that separates you as a self from those cells that physically compose you. Your own present identity contains the knowledge and "memory" of all those simultaneous existences (i.e. I am dead for other I's who carry m e as a "memory"), even as the cells in their way retain memory of all those physical structures which they (have) formed. Consciously, because of your time concepts, you will interpret those simultaneous lives in reincarnational terms, one seemingly before the other.

Your conscious ideas, expectations and beliefs direct the health and activity of the cells... In terms of consciousness, the entity or greater you knows as much more than you know, as you know more than your cells.

You however do have free will (as opposed to the cells [added by me]), for while the entity's psychic structure can be compared to the body, it is a part of and inhabits far greater dimensions. All of this may seem to have little to do with your personal reality. Yet your daily experience is as connected with your self or entity as it is with the cells of your physical form.

184
You are a part of your soul... The entity ... or greater self is composed of souls. ... The entity has its existence in multitudinous dimensions, its souls (? hard to read) free to travel within boundaries that would seem infinite to you. As the smallest cell within your body participates to its degree in your daily experience. so does the soul to an immeasurably greater extent share in the events of the entity.

... The cell does not need to be consciously aware of you in order to fulfill itself, even though your expectations of health largely influence its existence, but your recognition of the soul and entity can help you direct energies from these other dimensions into your daily life.

You are in the process of expanding your psychic structure, of becoming a conscious participator with the soul, in certain terms, of becoming what your soul is. As cells multiply and grow-within their own nature and the physical framework-so do selves "evolve" in terms of value fulfillment.

Souls are also creative psychic structures, ever-changing and yet always retaining individual integrity, and all are dependent one upon the other. Souls make up the life of the entity in those terms. Yet the entity is "more" than the soul is.

186
When you are aware of the existence of the entity and of the soul, you can consciously draw upon their greater energy, understanding and strength.

It is inherently available, but your conscious intent brings about certain changes in you that automatically trigger such benefits. The results will be felt down to the smallest cells within your body, and will affect even the most seemingly mundane events of your daily life.

You are growing in consciousness; therefore using it expands its capabilities ... your understanding and desire are so important. The processes initiated are beyond your normal awareness. They occur automatically with your intent if you do not block them through fear, doubt or opposing beliefs.

[EXERCISE]

Imagine yourself as a portion of an invisible universe, but one in which all the stars and planets are conscious and full of indescribable energy. You are aware of this. Think of this universe as having the form of a body. If you want to, visualize its outline brilliant against the sky. The suns and planets are your cells, each filled with energy and power but awaiting your direction.

Then see this image exploding into your own consciousness, which is unbelievably bright. Realize that it is a portion of a far greater multidimensional structure, spread out in an even richer dimension. Feel the entity sending you energy as you send energy to your cells. Let it fill your being and then direct it physically any place within your body that you choose.

If instead there is a physical event that you strongly desire, then use that energy to imagine i