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Welcome to the 2nd Seth Excerpts page of
Seth Quotes . Paradise Now.net:
The Nature of Personal Reality
channelled by Jane Roberts

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Intro & complete list of Seth excerpts & articles

Excerpts ctd. from
The Nature of Personal Reality
(part 2)

part 1 of  The Nature of Personal Reality excerpts

282
Because you have free will you have the responsibility and the gift, the joy and the necessity, of working with your beliefs and of choosing your personal reality as you desire

283
...there is no evil in basic terms ... as you each move individually through the dimensions of your own consciousness, you will understand that all seeming opposites are other faces of the one supreme drive toward creativity.

... worlds that you initiate and then inhabit.

284
Remember that ideas are as natural as the weather. They follow patterns, then, and obey certain laws even as more strictly physical phenomena do.

... at birth ... you emerge into a rich natural psychological environment in which beliefs and ideas are every bit as real.

294
Certain earth experiences... are dependent upon duration in time, and result as a consequence of the mind playing upon its experience through long earth seasons.

296
This era could be more advantageous to the individual and to the race than any other period, were it recognized for what it is and understood.

298
If they ever did, they no longer trust the integrity of their bodies. They begin to act out the drama in a script written by others - to which, however, they have acquiesced.

299
Nations, like individuals, can have split personalities at times. So there was a give-and-take involved in which the blacks expressed certain tendencies for the country as a whole, while the whites expressed other characteristics.

Both groups acquiesced to their roles. In larger terms, of course, each has belonged to other races in other times and places; or to be more accurate, in simultaneous existences one plays to the other's role.

302 [shorter sleep periods:]
The conscious mind is better able to remember and assimilate its dreaming experience, and in dreams the self can use its waking experience far more efficiently.

...Both the conscious and unconscious would operate far more effectively...under an abbreviated sleeping program, and for those involved in "creative" endeavors this kind of schedule would bring greater intuition and applied knowledge.

Individuals following such natural behavior would feel much greater stability in themselves....the flow of vitality would be heightened.

...the patterns will have their own flow at certain points in your life. Following your own rhythm, longer or shorter periods will naturally ensue. Your consciousness as you think of it will be expanded through such practices. Generally speaking, eight-hour sleep periods, or longer ones, are not beneficial, nor in larger terms are they natural for the race.

There is a give-and-take chemical reaction, or rather chemical rhythms of reactions, that are far more effective in the shorter sleep periods. Many of you sleep through periods that should be those of your greatest creativity and alertness, in which the conscious and unconscious are most beautifully focused and at one. The conscious mind is often drugged with sleep just when it could be deriving its greatest benefits from the unconscious, and be able to poise most meaningfully in the reality that you know. In these instances the beauty and illumination of your dream state can be clear in the conscious mind, and used to enrich your physical life. Contrasts in your experience will appear to you in their united clarity.

Such a change in your waking and sleeping patterns very nicely helps cut through your habitual ways of looking at the nature of your own personal world, and so alters your conception of reality in general.

On the other hand, areas of ordinary behavior that may have seemed opaque before, cloudy or dark - personal characteristic behavior that was not understood, for instance - may suddenly become quite clear as a result of this transformation, in which the shadowy aspects of the unconscious are perceived as brilliant.

Barriers are broken down, and with them certain beliefs that were based upon them. If the unconscious is no longer feared, then the races that symbolized it are no longer to be feared either.

... changed wake-sleep habits can ... bring about a transformation in which it is obvious that dreams contain great wisdom and creativity, that the unconscious is indeed quite conscious, and that in fact the individual sense of identity can be retained in the dream state.

305
When you find yourself as alert, responsive, and intellectual in the dream state as you are in waking life, it becomes impossible to operate within the old framework. This does not mean that in all dreams that particular kind of awareness is achieved, but it is often accomplished within the suggested wake-sleep pattern.

A certain beneficial and natural situation is arrived at, in which the conscious and unconscious minds meet. This occurs spontaneously whatever your sleep patterns, but is very brief and seldom remembered. The optimum state is so short because of the prolonged drugging of the conscious mind.

Animals...know exactly when to alter their patterns to longer or shorter sleep periods, therefore adjusting the adrenalin output and regulating all of the bodily hormones.

In humans, the idea of nutrition is also involved. With your habits the body is literally starved for long periods at nights, then often overfed during the day. Important therapeutic information that is given in dreams, and meant to be recalled, is not remembered because your sleep habits plunge you into what you think of as unconsciousness far too long.

The body itself can be physically refreshed and rested in much less than eight hours, and after five hours the muscles themselves yearn for activity. This need is also a signal to awaken so that unconscious material and dream information can be consciously assimilated.

Many of your misconceptions about the nature of reality are directly related to the division you place between your sleeping and waking experience, your conscious and unconscious activity. Opposites seem to occur that do not exist in actuality. Myths, symbols and rationalizations all become necessary to explain the seeming divergences, the seeming contradictions between realities that appear to be so different.

Individual psychological mechanisms are activated, sometimes, in terms of neurosis or other mental problems; these bring out into the open inner challenges or dilemmas that otherwise could be worked out more easily through an open give-and-take of conscious and unconscious reality.

In the natural body-mind relationship the sleep state operates as a great connector, an interpreter, allowing the free flow of conscious and unconscious material. In the kind of sleep pattern suggested, optimum conditions are set up. Neurosis and psychosis simply would not occur under such conditions. And in the natural back-and-forth leeway of the system, exterior dilemmas or problems are worked out in the dream situation, and interior difficulty may also be solved symbolically through physical experience.

Illumination concerning the inner self may appear clearly during waking reality, and in the same way invaluable information about the conscious self may be received in the dream state. There is a spontaneous flow of psychic energy with appropriate hormonal reaction, in both situations. You do not have energy dammed up through repressions, for example, and emotions and their expression are not feared.

In your present system of beliefs... a fear of the emotions is often generated. Not only are they often hindered in waking life, but censored as much as possible in dreams. Their expression becomes very difficult; great blockages of energy occur, which in your terms can result in neurotic or even stronger, psychotic, behavior.

The inhibition of such emotions also interferes with the nervous system and its therapeutic devices. These repressed emotions, and the whole charge behind such distorted concepts about the unconscious, result in a projection outward upon others. In your individual area there will be persons upon whom you will project all of those charged, frightening emotions or characteristics. At the same time you will be drawn to those individuals because the projections represent a part of you.

There is within the innate characteristics of the mammalian brain, then, a great balance in which complete physical relaxation can occur in sleep, while consciousness in maintained in a "partially suspended, passive-yet-alert" manner. That state allows conscious participation and interpretation of "unconscious" dream activity. The condition gives the body its refreshment, yet it does not lie inert for such long periods of time.

309
The long period of continuous waking conscious activity is to some extent at variance with your natural inclinations.

...The body is denied the frequent rests it requires. Conscious stimuli is over-applied, making assimilation difficult and placing a strain upon the mind-body relationship.

... all of those flamboyant, creative, spontaneous, emotional surges that emerge normally from the unconscious become feared and projected outward, then, upon enemies, other races and creeds.

310
 dream state
Lessons from "future experience" are also at hand. There are quite natural physical mechanisms in the body that provide for such interaction. You deny yourself many of these advantages however through the artificial alienation that you have set up by your present wake-sleep patterns, to which, again, your ideas of good and evil are intimately connected.

When you trust yourself then you will trust your own dream interpretations-and these will lead you to greater self-understanding. Your beliefs of good and evil will become much more clear to you, and you will no longer need to project repressed tendencies out upon others in exaggerated fashion.

314
We are IN God. We were NEVER externalized ... Everything we imagine and know is inside. There is no outside.

... only an inside could possess those characteristics of constant expansion.

319
The brain can be called simply the physical counterpart of the mind. By means of the brain the functions of the soul and intellect are connected with the body. Through the characteristics of the brain, events that are of nonphysical origin become physically valid. There is a definite filtering and focusing effect at work, then. Practically speaking, you do indeed form the appearance that reality takes through your conscious beliefs. Those beliefs are used as screening and directing agents, separating certain nonphysical probable events from others, and bringing them into three-dimensional actuality.

Other probable events could just as well become physically experienced ones. Those beliefs about yourself form your own self-image, and define your concepts of what is possible or not possible for you,. You will choose from those nonphysical probable events, therefore, only those you feel you are in accord with.

Because of your psychological and psychic structure, there is within the rich makeup of your being a literally endless variety of what you may call probable selves. In one reality or another these will all be experienced. In your present existence however you will utilize only those psychological characteristics that you believe you possess. So, you see, the personality cannot be defined as being thus-and-so.

The physical constitution of the body follows your beliefs, and so all of its sense data will faithfully mirror the beliefs that direct its activity. In certain terms hypnosis is simply an exercise in the alteration of beliefs, and only too clearly shows that sense experience follows expectations.

The "you" that you presently conceive yourself to be represents the emergence into physical experience of but one probable state of your being, who then directs corporeal life and "frames" and defines all sense data. When your ideas about yourself change, so does your experience.

Even the intimate body experience alters. You may say that you are you, but which you are you? In the most personal terms each individual creates his own world...

The overall private experience that you perceive forms your world, period. But which world do you inhabit? For if you altered your beliefs and therefore your private sensations of reality, then that world, seemingly the only one, would also change. You do go through transformations of beliefs all the time, and your perception of the world is different. You seem to be, no longer, the person that you were. You are quite correct-you are not the person that you were, and your world has changed, and not just symbolically.

Often you fall into lapses in which you actually pull in your consciousness, so to speak, and experience life in a lesser fashion. In such a state you do not seem to experience yourself directly, and indeed in the midst of what you think of as the waking state you act in the most mechanical of fashions, following habit and being less aware of sensual stimuli.

On such occasions your beliefs usually lose their edge, the directions you give to your body are not clear, and the world seems fuzzy. This is often a time of deep unconscious activity, when new latent probable characteristics are biding their time, so to speak, waiting for emergence.

In your terms probable events are brought into actuality by utilizing the body's nerve structure through certain intensities of will or conscious belief.

These beliefs obviously have another reality beside the one with which you are familiar. They attract and bring into being certain events instead of others. Therefore, they determine the entry of experienced events from an endless variety of probable ones. You seem to be at the center of your world, because for you your world begins with that point of intersection where soul and physical consciousness meet.

In surface terms the sense of "I" that you possess is the result of constantly emerging probable identities, giving continuity in time through the physical apparatus of the body with its built-in intervals of nerve reaction. You only remember the portion of your identity that is physically realized-those portions that are drawn into corporeal pattern. (aber die anderen sind doch genauso corporeal) This is the result of the focusing and yet limiting behavior of the physical brain, for effective survival behavior in your reality depends upon time reactions. The nerve patterns activity therefore causes the illusion of a present, in which your consciousness appears focused and alert.

In certain terms "future" events exist now, but they are too fast. They jump over the nerve endings too quickly, and physically you cannot perceive or experience them as yet.

Impulses possess a far different reality than physicists or biologists suppose. As you think now, "past" is still occurring. The "drag" still leaps the synapses, but, again, is not physically recorded. Past events continue. Consciously you only experience portions of events with your corporeal structure, yet the structure itself records them.

In such a way, the cells retain their memory, though you do not perceive it, and the body is aware of so-called future occurrences, though as a rule you do not consciously sense this. At other levels of psychic activity however such knowledge is also available to you, but only when you disconnect your experience from the time-activated neuronal structure-and this you can do through various alterations of consciousness, often quite spontaneously adopted.

Many such states can give you a far greater direct experience with the nature of your noncorporeal reality than any normally conscious questioning. Which you? Which world? You can to some extent discover for yourself the other probable you's that are a portion of your being.

323
Future events are also your selection of probable ones, however, and many occurrences in which you are involved speed past you too quickly for your neuronal structure. These are not served up to you as your present.

They represent your experience on other than physical levels (but are physical when experienced at a later point, added by me)... You perceive a certain event as present. Your beliefs give it entry through the nerve synapses, and attract it. It then seems to become the past. You have only tuned into a portion of it physically, though; that past event continues to exist with its own "future," which you may or may not perceive, according to which probable action you pull into your next experiences of actuality.

The past does have its own past, present and future, therefore. From a given past event you will only materialize a particular future, but the event itself continues, and possesses a dimensionality of its own-or rather a multidimensionality that you also possess.

You can dip into cellular memory, for example. Using memory, you follow but one recognized sequence of remembered events backward. There are elements in your past that are as unpredictable, however, as the elements in your future now appear to be. There is creativity in your past waiting for you even as there is in your future, but to utilize such experiences you must learn to alter your beliefs, and to some degree escape from the particular kind of limited conscious focus that you habitually use.

324
Sense data can be organized in different fashions. Mechanisms (physical ones) and pathways exist, making it quite possible for you to see sound, or hear color, although that is not your primary habit at this time.

In certain terms time intervals are jumped, as when a "past" smell or sight is suddenly perceived with present vividness, though you would say it has already occurred in the past. Under particular conditions a memory may suddenly become more real than... the present moment...and even seem to blot out the occurrences of the moment.

This could not happen if your physical structure did not have built-in mechanisms allowing it to, and if under certain conditions the normal intervals between the synapses of the nerve cells could not be leaped in a different fashion. ... beneath your usual consciousness, your physical organism can react to future events without your knowledge, as it can to past ones. In such cases the intensity of the initially nonphysical event is enough to break through normal neuronal patterns.

325
...one of the reasons why ... predictions often do not seem to bear out, for at every point you do indeed have the free will, through your beliefs, to alter your experience.

A new belief in the present ... can cause changes in the past on a neuronal level. You must understand that basically time is simultaneous. Present beliefs can indeed alter the past. ... in the spontaneous disappearance of ... disease, certain alterations are made that affect cellular memory, genetic codes, or neuronal patterns in the past.

In such instances there is... a reaching into deep biological structures as they existed at one time; at that point the probabilities are altered, and the condition erased in your present - but also in your past (but perhaps one probable self already experienced that past, and one is just tuning into this one then?)

A sudden or intense belief in health can indeed "reverse" a disease, but in a very practical way it is a reversal in terms of time. New memories are inserted in place of the old ones, as far as cells are concerned under such conditions. This kind of therapy happens quite frequently on a spontaneous basis when people rid themselves of diseases they do not even know they possess.

Learning... is also passed on through the body's present corporeal reality, sometimes entirely changing the messages to past cells, that in your terms no longer exist.

....a strong belief in a particular ability generated in the present will reach into the past and effect whatever changes would have to occur there in order to now make the ability apparent.

... accelerated learning takes place, when under hypnosis or otherwise a present individual is convinced that he or she is, for example, a great painter, or a linguist. The present belief activates "latent" abilities within each person.

The biological structure as it existed in the past is therefore affected. Experience is built into the organism that it did not have before, in your terms. It is a sort of reprogramming.

327
When you alter your beliefs today you also reprogram your past. As far as you are concerned the present is your point of action, focus, and power, and from that point of volition you form both your future and past. Realizing this, you will understand that you are not at the mercy of a past over which you have no control.

While your present conscious beliefs dictate your current experience, and while your physical body wears its solidity only in present time to your senses, beneath this both the everchanging elements of your body and your consciousness are relatively free in time. They exist in a multidimensionality with which rational consciousness is not yet equipped to deal.

...the function/natural abilities of reasoning awareness, for its powers allow you to focus experience in a highly specific manner, and to direct energy with great purposeful attention. In your terms, this action is in the process of automatically changing the nature of rational consciousness-which is, as you think of it, in a state of evolution.

You may say, "I was born in a house on a certain street in a certain town, and no present belief to the contrary will change that fact." If, in the present, one past event can be altered within your neuronal structure, however, then basically no event is safe from such change.

328
In the current pivoting of experience, therefore, your conscious mind directs not only the present, but future and past experience of deep neurological events.

Cellular memory can be changed at any point. Present beliefs can insert into the past new memory, both psychologically and physically.

329
In daily practical experience, try to concentrate for a while upon seemingly subordinate abilities, ones you think of as latent. If you do so consistently, using your imagination and will, then those abilities will become prominent in your present. The current beliefs will reprogram and alter past experience. It is not simply that past, forgotten, unconsciously perceived events will be put together in a new way and organized under a new heading, but that in that past (now not perceivable), the entire bodily response to seemingly past events will change.

...Definite reorganizations in that past will occur in your present, allowing you to behave in entirely new fashions.

Learned behavior therefore alters not only present and future but also past conduct. Your power as a rational consciousness focused in the present provides you with opportunities for creativity that you are but vaguely learning to understand. As you do learn, you will automatically begin to appreciate the multidimensional nature of not only your own species but of others as well. The moment as you think of it, then, is the creative framework through which you, the nonphysical self, constantly form corporeal reality; and through that window into earthly existence you form both its future and its past.

330
In purely physical terms, what you think of as consciousness of the self arises from a certain peak of intensity reached by the gestalt consciousness of the atoms and molecules, and cells and organs, that compose the body...

The psychic structure of consciousness that organizes that bodily gestalt is, however, not dependent upon it, and so the you that you experience is only a portion of this greater identity.

During certain stages in sleep states you short-circuit the neurological structures, and perceive experiences of a multi-dimensional nature that you then attempt to translate, as best you can, into stimuli that can be physically assimilated-hence you often convert these into symbolic images that can be understood, and to some extent reacted to, by your bodily structure.

...such constructions ... often bear a similarity to the inner architecture of the cells, and to planets. Your dream images are biologically structured, then. The experiences behind them bring you in contact with the deepest portions of your nonphysical reality ... the unconscious translates these for you into recognizable images and forms.

In the same way your unconscious also transforms for you, from an otherwise undifferentiated maze of reality, fields of activation into recognizable objects and events in your daily life.

So the entity in its own way possesses what you can think of as future neuronal structures.

You form your corner of the universe, which is itself a part of another one. Within this the actions and beliefs of one affect all.

Each part is vital... there is instant communication between the smallest and the largest... - and each spins its own web of probabilities form which other universes continually spring.

333
Wisdom and foolishness would be seen as aspects, one of the other.

... you can draw into your present life some knowledge and intimate connection with your own probable realities.

334
Since your conscious beliefs determine those unconscious functions that bring about your personal experience, your first step is to enlarge those beliefs.

335
If you think in terms of a multidimensional self, then you will realize that you have many more avenues open to expression and fulfillment than you have been using.

...The simple act of decision will then activate the unconscious mechanisms. You ... have a rich variety of probable experience from which to choose.

Your imagination can be of great value, allowing you to open yourself to such courses; you can then use it to help you bring these into being.

336
In your mind, therefore, see those probable abilities or events taking place. As you do, the intensity of your desire brings them into your experience. There are no boundaries, again, set about the self. There are literally many other probable you's. You can draw upon their abilities, as in their own way they call upon your own, for you are all intimately connected.

You must realize that you are indeed a probable you. Your experience is the result of beliefs. Your neuronal structure necessitates a certain focus so that other experiences counter to your conscious assumptions remain probable or latent. Alter the beliefs and any probable self can, within certain limitations, be actualized.

What you must understand is this: Each of the events in each of your lives was "once" probable. From a given field of action, then, you choose those happenings that will be physically materialized.

337 [robber and victim:]
On basic levels your convictions will be quite similar, but one will see himself as the victim and one as the aggressor-that is, each of you will react differently to the same set of beliefs. However the two of you are necessary if a crime of that nature is, or is to be, committed.

All of your present reality was drawn from probable reality. ... with the built-in time recognition that is so largely a part of your neurological structure; so usually there is a lag, a lapse in time, during which your beliefs cause material actualization. When you try to change your convictions in order to change your experience, you also have to first stop the momentum that you have already built up, so to speak. You are changing the messages while the body is used to reacting smoothly, unquestioningly, to a certain set of beliefs.

There is a steady even flow in which conscious activity through the neurological structure brings about events, and a familiar pattern of reaction is established. When you alter these conscious beliefs through effort, then a period of time is necessary while the structure learns to adjust to the new preferred situation. If beliefs are changed overnight, comparatively less time is required.

338
...each belief can be seen as a powerful station, pulling to it from fields of probabilities only those signals to which it is attuned, and blocking out all others. When you set up a new station there may be some static or bleed-through from an old one for a while.

You are each your own artist, and your inner visualizations become models for other situations and events. ... The images in your mind draw to themselves all the proper emotional energy and power needed to fill them out as physical events.

You can change the picture of your life at any time if only you realize that it is simply the one portrait of yourself that you have created form an unlimited amount of probable ones.

The abilities, strengths and variants that you may want to actualize are already latent, in your terms, and at your disposal. ...you will not need to pretend to ignore your present situation. You will recognize it instead as a probable reality that you have physically materialized. Taking that for granted, you will then begin the process necessary to bring a different probability into experience.

You will do this by concentrating upon what you want, but feeling no conflict between that and what you have, because one will not contradict each other; each will be seen as a reflection of belief in daily life. ...may take time to change that picture. But concentration upon the present unhealthy situation will only prolong it.

...Your present convictions will act like a magnet, activating all such past issues, happy or sad. You will choose from your previous experience all of those events that reinforce your conscious beliefs, and so ignore those that do not; the latter may even seem to be nonexistent.

...the emerging memories will then turn on the body mechanisms, merging past and present in some kind of harmonious picture. This means that the pieces will fit together whether they are joyful or not.

This joining of the past and present, in that context, predisposes you to similar future events, for you have geared yourself for them. Change now quite practically alters both the past and the future.

340
In the most intimate of terms, your past and future are modified by your present reactions. Alterations occur within the body. Circuits within the nervous system are changed, and energies that you do not understand seek out new connections on much deeper levels far beyond consciousness.

Your present beliefs govern the actualization of events. Creativity and experience are being formed moment by moment by each individual.

... your present is the point at which flesh and matter meet with the spirit. Therefore the present is your point of power in your current lifetime, as you think of it.

... sit with your eyes wide open, looking about you, and realize that this moment represents the point of your power, through which you can affect both past and future events.

The present seen before you, with its intimate physical experience, is the result o action in other such presents. Do not intimidated therefore by the past or the future. There is no need at all for undesirable aspects of your contemporary reality to be projected into the future, unless you use the power of the present to do so.

If you learn to get hold of this feeling of power now, you can use it most effectively to alter your life situation in whatever way you choose...

341
Exterior conditions can always be changed...The present as you think of it, and in practical working terms, is that point at which you select your physical experience from all those events that could be materialized. You physical circumstances change automatically as your beliefs do. As your knowledge grows, so your experience becomes more fulfilling. This does not necessarily mean that it evens out in any way, or that there are not peaks and valleys. Each aspiration presupposes the admission of a lack, each challenge presupposes a barrier to be overcome. The more adventurous will often choose greater challenges, and so in their minds the contrasts between what they want to achieve and their present status can seem to be impossible.

Your point of reality and power is ... in your current experience. A realization of this would allow you at any age to draw upon qualities and knowledge that "existed" in your past or "will exist" in your future. Your ages are probable.

342
... time does not basically exist as you "know" it, you are neurologically forced to perceive your life as a series of passing moments. ...Animals... do not deteriorate in the same way.

Which you? Which world? If you are lonely it is because you believe in your loneliness in this present point that you acknowledge as time. From what seems to be the past you draw only those memories that reinforce your condition, and you project those into the future. Physically, you are overwhelming your body as it responds to a state of loneliness through chemical and hormonal reactions.

... In such a case you must realize that you make your own loneliness, and resolve to change through both thought and action. Action is thought in physical motion, outwardly perceived.

344
The present is the point of power.

If you fully comprehend your power in the present, you will realize that action at that point also alters the past, its beliefs and your reactions.

... your present beliefs, in a manner of speaking, are like the directions given to the entire personality, simultaneously organizing and reorganizing past experience according to your current concepts of reality.

... to look backward for the course of current problems can lead you into the habit of seeking only negative episodes from your past, and prevent you from experiencing it as a source of pleasure, accomplishment, or success.

345
You are structuring your earlier life through the dissatisfactions of the present, and therefore reinforcing your problems.

A great many unsatisfactory conditions result because individuals become frightened at various periods in their lives, doubt themselves, and begin to concentrate upon "negative" aspects.

If he journeyed through his memories trying to find a different kind of proof instead, then in that same past he would discover instances when he did relate well with others. Your present beliefs structure the memories which will parade before you now - and what you remember will then seem to justify the beliefs.

When you are trying to alter your beliefs, look through your past with the new conceptions in mind.

In almost all cases of present limitation, there is one main theme in that particular area: The individual has schooled himself or herself to stress "negative" aspects, for whatever reasons.

Those memories will be used to reach any conclusion, as statistics can be used, for example. Along the way you may settle for a given remembered event or two, and assign to them the reasons for your present behavior.

347
To rid yourself of annoying restrictions, then... you repattern your past from the present. Whatever your circumstances, you use the past as a rich source, looking through it for your successes, restructuring it. When you search it looking for what is wrong, then you become blind to what was right, ... so that the past only mirrors the shortcomings that now face you.

"What is wrong?" The question itself becomes a format through which experience is seen, and itself represents one of the main reasons for all limitations, physical, psychic or spiritual.

At one point or another the individual ceased concentrating upon what was right in certain personal areas, and began to focus upon and magnify specific "lacks".

348
... the sooner you begin to act upon new ones the better. Otherwise you are not trusting them in the present. If you are poor and want to have more money, and try to maintain a belief in abundance-while still faced with the fact of present poverty - you must in your reality make some symbolic move that shows you are willing to accept the change.

As foolish as it may sound, you should give some money away, or in whatever manner that suits you act as if you did have more money than you physically have. You must respond to your new belies, so that neurologically the new message gets across.

You perform habitually in certain manners as a result of your beliefs. Now if you willfully change some of those habits then you are also getting the message across.

You must look within yourself for evidences for what you want in terms of positive experience. Examine your past with that in mind. Imagine your future from the power point of the present. In such a way at least you are not using the past to reinforce your limitations, or projecting them into the future. It is only natural to contrast what you want with what you have, and it is very easy to become discouraged in so doing, but looking for errors in the past will not help you. (point of power exercise) A correctly utilized five-minute period of time can be of great benefit, however. In this period concentrate upon the fact that the point of power is now. Feel and dwell upon the certainty that your emotional, spiritual and psychic abilities are focused through the flesh, and for five minutes only direct all of your attention toward what you want. Use visualization or verbal thought-whatever comes most naturally to you; but for that period do not concentrate upon any lacks, just upon your desire.

349
Use all of your energy and attention. Then forget about it. Do not check to see how well it is working. Simply make sure that in that period your intentions are clear. Then in one way or another, according to your own individual situation, make on physical gesture or act that is in line with your belief or desire. Behave physically, then, at least once a day in a way that shows that you have faith in what you are doing. ... [money] acting as if you had more than you do.

The belief in the present, reinforced for five minutes, plus such a physical action, will sometimes bring literally awesome results.

350

... each individual will have his or her own way of reinforcing beliefs.

YOU FORM YOUR REALITY NOW, through the intersection of soul in flesh, and in your terms the present is your point of power.

351
... through your current beliefs you can, in your own space and time, attract tendencies toward certain experiences shared by these others. There is a constant interaction in this multidimensional point of power, therefore, so that in your terms one incarnated self draws from all of the others what abilities it wants, according to its own specific, localized beliefs.

In quite real personal and racial terms, the past is still happening. You create it from your present according to your beliefs.

354
Your beliefs act like a hypnotist, then. As long as the particular directions are given, so will your "automatic" experience conform. The one suggestion that can break through is this: "I create my reality, and the present is my point of power."

From the present you have hypnotized yourself, viewing the past not as it was to your experience, but as it appears now in the light of your current beliefs.

355

Hypnosis... is merely a state of concentrated attention, in which you focus upon beliefs. ...The only prerequisite is an intense concentration upon specific incoming data to the exclusion of everything else. Therefore the orders given are clear-cut, to the point. No conflicting information is received, no cross messages.

The shutting out of superfluous data and the narrowing of focus are the two most important ingredients. Relaxation can help simply because the body messages are also quieted, and the mind not concerned with them.

Many beliefs were originally accepted as a result of such a situation, without any formal induction, but when the circumstances were right. A period of panic induces immediate accelerated concentration. All the forces of energy are mobilized at once, while little relaxation is usually involved.

... the ability of your consciousness to mobilize unconscious reactions.

It is of greatest importance that you realize several points before you try the method I suggest.

First of all, the unconscious is not a sponge, indiscriminately accepting material regardless of the considerations of your conscious self. All beliefs and suggestions are first sifted through your conscious mind, and only those that you accept are then permitted their penetration into the other areas of the self.

No negative beliefs were thrust upon you, therefore, despite your will. None can be inflicted upon you that you do not consciously accept.

Quite without any inductions, you have "hypnotized" yourself into all the beliefs that you have. This simply means that you have consciously accepted them, focused upon them, excluded data to the contrary, narrowed your interests to those specific points, and accordingly activated the unconscious mechanisms that then materialize those convictions through physical experience.

Formal hypnosis merely brings about an accelerated version of what goes on all the time. It is a perfect example of the instantaneous results possible ideally-but not usually seen practically-as present beliefs negate past ones.

357
Your reality is the result of a hallucination, if by this you mean that it is only the picture shown by your senses.

358
Yet for your own reasons you began to believe in illness more than in health, in poverty more than abundance, in loneliness rather than affection.

359 [self hypnosis exercise, similar to 367]

360
You may experience spectacular results at once. But continue the exercise even if this happens.

Inner channels must become repatterned. There will be a feel to this that will serve as your own individual guideline. There is no need to continue the practice over ten minutes....Spending a longer period of time simply reinforces the idea of problems involved.

Natural hypnosis is the acquiescence of the unconscious to conscious belief. In periods of concentrated focus, with all distractions cut out, the desired ideas are then implanted

...positive belief instilled in childhood... the person acts in line with this belief in all ways; but also a variety of subsidiary beliefs grow up about the main one.

361
...The belief in his own comeliness is so important that others will react to him in the same fashion.

Your beliefs, then, are like hypnotic focuses. You reinforce them constantly through the normal inner talking in which you all indulge.

This inner communication acts like the constant repetition of a hypnotist. Few people will have simply one main area of concentration. Usually several are involved, but these represent the ways in which you are using your energy.

362
The unconscious accepts those orders given to it by the conscious mind.

When you find yourself dissatisfied,... question the orders you are giving in the particular arena of experience. The results do not seem, now, to follow your conscious desires. But you will find that they do follow your conscious beliefs, which may be quite different.

363
In cases of therapy, an individual is already frightened, and because of the beliefs in your civilization he looks not to himself but to an authority figure for help.

366
... an individual who thinks that he is poor will lose or misuse, or badly invest, any amount of money, whether he works hard for it or is given it.

In those areas in which you are dissatisfied, you feel that you are powerless, or that your will is paralyzed, or that conditions continue despite what you think of as your intent. Yet if you pay attention to your own quite conscious thoughts, you will find that you are concentrating upon precisely those negative aspects that so appall you. You are hypnotizing yourself quite effectively and so reinforcing the situation. You may say, horrified, "What can I do? I am hypnotizing myself into..." Yet in other facets of your life you may be hypnotizing yourself into wealth, accomplishment, satisfaction-and here you do not complain. The same issues are involved. The same principles are operating. In those positive life situations you are certain of your initiative. There is no doubt. Your beliefs become reality.

In the unsatisfactory aspects, you must understand this: there is also no doubt. You are utterly convinced that you are sick, or poor, or lonely, or spiritually opaque, or unhappy.

The results, then, as easily and effortlessly follow.

367 [self hypnosis exercise]
What should you do, then? First of all, you must realize that you are the hypnotist. You must seize the initiative here as you have in other positive aspects of your life. Whatever the superficial reasons for your beliefs, you must say:

"For a certain amount of time I will momentarily suspend what I believe in this area, and willfully accept the belief I want. I will pretend that I am under hypnosis, with myself as hypnotist and subject. For that time desire and belief will be one. There will be no conflict because I do this willingly. For this period I will completely alter my old beliefs. Even though I sit quietly, in my mind I will act as if the belief I want were mine completely."

...do not think of the future, but only of the present. ...If you are lonely, believe that you are filled with the feeling of companionship instead. Realize that you are exerting your initiative to imagine such situations. Here there can be no comparison with your normal situation. Use visual data, or words-whatever is most natural to you. ... no more than ten minutes is required.

If you do this faithfully, within a month you will find the new conditions materializing in your experience... The unconscious will be aroused, bringing its great powers to bear, bringing you the new results. Do not try to overdo this, to go through the entire day worrying about beliefs, for example. This can only cause you to contrast what you have with what you want. Forget the exercise when it is completed. You will find yourself with impulses that arrive in line with these newly inserted beliefs, and then it is up to you to act on these and not ignore them.

(repetitious actions) many physical symptoms... here also whole groups of recurring reactions to certain stimuli are involved. Behind them there is often the same kind of compulsion. In their own way symptoms frequently operate, actually, as repetitive neurological ritual, meant to protect the sufferer from something else that he fears even more.

370
The same sort of situation operates in hay fever, for instance, and for that matter in most other dis-eases.

Natural hypnosis and conscious beliefs give their proper instructions to the unconscious, which then dutifully affects the body mechanism so that it responds in a manner harmonious with the beliefs. So you condition your body to react in certain fashions... for the original suggestion of dis-ease was in itself given because of another belief.

... but behind that there is far more; for if you do not believe in your own worth as a human being, then you will simply get other symptoms...

All of this can be avoided through the realization that your point of power is in the present...

373
Moral values become attached to food, with some seen as good and some as bad ... You are what you think, not what you eat-and to a large extent what you think about what you eat is far more important.

What you think about your body, health, and illness will determine how your food is used, and how your chemistry handles fats, for instance, or carbohydrates. Your attitudes in preparing meals are highly important.

375
The point of power is in the present. You must thoroughly understand that, and then you can take hold of your life and begin to use natural hypnosis for your benefit in all areas. It works advantageously for each of you now in those portions of your lives with which you are pleased.

In all such situations, it is highly important that you do not concentrate your main attention in that area of experience with which you are least satisfied. This acts as a deepening of hypnotic suggestion. Just reminding yourself of your other accomplishments will by itself operate in a constructive fashion, even if nothing else is done. Such focus of attention on positive aspects automatically pulls your energy away from the problem. It also builds up your own sense of worth and power as you are reminded of adequate performance at other levels of experience.

Whenever you are trying to rid yourself of a dilemma, make sure that you do not concentrate your attention upon it instead. This acts to cut out other data, and to further intensify your focus upon your difficulty. When you break that focus the problem is solved.

376
You eat too much because you believe that you are overweight.

You must, therefore, willingly suspend that belief. Using the exercises given in this chapter, you must make a conscious effort to insert a different belief; employ natural hypnosis in this new way. If you realize your own worth after reading this book, then that realization in the present can negate any past ideas of unworthiness that may have attracted you to the condition.

You are not underweight because you do not eat enough food, or utilize it properly. Instead, you do not eat enough because you believe that you are underweight.

In any area, great clues can be received simply through paying more attention to the conscious thoughts that you have during the day, for each of them serve as minute suggestions, modifying your behavioral patterns and affecting bodily mechanisms.

378
... Often this represents a symbolic transference of symptoms from the body outward into the social structure.

379
It's far better to think in terms of power than of lacks-the power of life, of motion, of speech, etc. People confuse this with power over their environment, or others, then wonder why power over doesn't work...

A belief in powerlessness in any area sets up its possibility in others-it operates as negative suggestion.

381
In such cases the dilemma is projected outside of the self and seen as an exterior condition which can be manipulated. Indeed, a "magical" transformation is involved. This is not to be construed, however, as a statement that all creative acts result from individual problems or neuroses. Quite the contrary, in fact. Such problems projected outward can never really be solved as far as the individual is concerned, of course, since their source is not understood.

382
A sudden conversion may completely rid an individual of physical symptoms - any kind of conversion. Under that general term I include a strong emotional arousal and fresh emotional involvement, affiliation, or sense of belonging. This may involve religion, politics, art, or simply falling in love.

In all of these areas the problem, whatever its nature or cause, is in one way or another "magically" transferred to another facet of activity, projected away from the self. Huge energy blocks are moved. The man who has believed that he was evil may now see the world, or persons of another faith or political affiliation, as evil instead. He then feels rid of the problem itself but is quite ready to attack it in others, and with great self-righteousness and justification.

... distinction ... and genuine mystic understanding, which may also come in a flash of time. Mystic enlightenment does not see an enemy, however, and there is no need for arrogance, attack, or self-justification.

Love, as it is often experienced, allows an individual to take his sense of self-worth from another for a time, and to at least momentarily let the other's belief in his goodness supersede his own beliefs in lack of worth.

383
When you view the world, social groups, political groups, your friends, your private experience-these are all attracted into your realm of activity by your beliefs. Natural hypnosis...leads you to seek out those situations that will confirm your beliefs, and to avoid those that threaten them.

You will often try to project a problem outward to free yourself. If this is done

the question at issue will seem forever outside of you, beyond solution, and of mass proportion.

... She felt she had no power in the moment.

This is an abdication of the severest kind, involving both your spirituality and your biological nature; you feel trapped far more than an animal in a dire situation, and you deny yourself the ability to act. The withheld power is itself transferred, then. In her case, it was put onto another.

384
... any time that you assign elements of your experience to exterior sources, you are really doing the same thing as she did.

385
You can project your dilemmas or your abilities outward into other avenues of activity, then, but until you realize that you form your reality and that your power resides in the moment, you will not be able to solve your problems nor utilize your strengths properly.

386
...psychic territory of power...represents an inviolate area in which the person insists upon remaining supreme, aware of his or her uniqueness and abilities. This psychic region will be protected at all costs, and here there is indeed immunity from all disease or lack...

...all of the inner difficulties can be resolved by understanding that you form your own reality, and that your point of power is in the present. (398: the point of power is in the present, when your nonphysical self merges with corporeal reality. The recognition of that fact alone can revitalize your life).

The habit of not facing problems, which indeed are challenges, can be addictive. A feeling of powerlessness in one field can be transferred to others ... then even the psychic territory of power can be assailed...

387
As I have said before, your thoughts are reality. They directly affect your body.

388
Illness usually represent unfaced problems, in your terms, and these dilemmas embody challenges meant to lead you to greater achievement and fulfillment. Because body and mind operate so well together, one will attempt to cure the other, and will often succeed if left alone. The organism has its own beliefs in health that are unconscious on your part.

... The smiling of itself activates pleasant memories, neurological connections, hormonal workings. It reminds you of your creaturehood.

391
Criminals... share a sense of powerlessness and a feeling of resentment because of it. Therefore they seek to assure themselves that they are indeed powerful through antisocial acts, often of violence.

They desire to be strong, then, while believing in a lack of personal strength...

393
The confined project their personal problems out upon the society. Society returns the "favor." In the same way individuals often think of certain characteristics as criminal or evil, and attempt to isolate those portions from other areas of their own activity. Power or the lack of it, and the attitudes, surrounding either mode, are often involved.

The need to act and be in control of action is paramount in conscious beings.

394
...considering power as violent you will be afraid to act to some extent. You will then consider goodness and powerlessness to be somewhat synonymous, and equate power with evil...

As a society you may project it upon the criminal, as a nation upon a foreign country. As an individual you may place this power upon an employer, a labor union, or any other segment of society. In whatever area you choose, though, you will feel relatively weak in comparison with the strength that you have projected outward. You meet your own denied power....whenever you find yourself in a situation where you feel weak in comparison to another person or situation that frightens you.

...many people have physical symptoms or suffer unpleasant situations because they are afraid to utilize their own power of action, and equate power with aggression-meaning violence.

Such feelings arouse artificial guilts. The individual who speaks out most loudly for the death penalty feels that he himself should really be condemned to death, to pay for the great aggression (violence) within him that he dares not express.

395
... the private closeting of normal aggression often brings psychological rioting and outburst of physical symptoms.

... the medical profession obviously needs patients as badly as the ill need the hospitals.

396
Natural aggression is simply the power to act.

There are many subsidiary beliefs connected to these convictions. They can all work in such a way that you deny yourself the use of your abilities-and this in turn causes you to project them outward upon others.

397
If you believe that wealth is evil, ... you automatically rob yourself of any ability that might bring you riches. Talents that are accepted as good in themselves may be inhibited simply because their fulfillment might lead to success in financial terms.

Your beliefs then are highly important in the way in which you handle the power of personal action.

The more powerless you feel, the less able you are to utilize your own healing abilities. You are then forced to project these outward upon a physician, a healer, or any other outside agency.

398
When these realignments are always made form the outside, the body's innate coherence becomes jeopardized, and its intimate relationship with mind confused. More, its innate healing powers are dulled.

... This usually means that no time is allowed for necessary inner dialogues of self-questioning, and the self-healing that might otherwise occur is brought about through belief in another. This can only go on for so long, however.

In your terms, you are in a state of evolution as a species. Part of this experience includes a natural fascination with exterior events. You are developing properties of consciousness that are in their own way uniquely your own, as your environment is. A strong focus is a necessary counterpart, since you are involved in a learning process in which all elements inherent in the situation will be explored.

399
As you understand time, you will eventually be able to merge your inner compreh