“Seth material” search engine (Jane Roberts)

We will then resume dictation. (Pause.) Your beliefs generate emotion. It is somewhat fashionable to place feelings above conscious thoughts, the idea being that emotions are more basic and natural than conscious reasoning is. The two actually go together but your conscious thinking largely determines your emotions, and not the other way around. 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.

(Pause at 10:22.) Here the belief itself will generate the negative emotions that will, indeed, bring about a physical or emotional illness. The imagination will follow, painting dire mental pictures of a particular condition. Before long physical data bears out the negative belief; negative in that it is far less desirable than a concept of health.

One belief, of course, can be dependent upon many others, each generating its own emotion and imaginative reality. The belief in illness itself depends upon a belief in human unworthiness, guilt and imperfection, for example.

There are two ways to get at your own conscious beliefs. [...] Write down your beliefs in a variety of areas, and you will find that you believe different things at different times. [...] These represent opposing beliefs that regulate your emotions, your bodily condition and your physical experience. [...] Invisible beliefs will appear that unite those seemingly diverse attitudes. Invisible beliefs are simply those of which you are fully aware but prefer to ignore, because they represent areas of strife which you have not been willing to handle thus far. [...]

(10:27.) No matter how open it may seem that you are, you will nevertheless accept certain emotions that you think of as safe, and ignore others, or stop them at particular points, because you are afraid of following them further. (Pause.) This behavior will follow your beliefs, of course. [...] You will accept only those emotions that appear to be in keeping with your ideas of youth. [...] You consider yourself quite emotional, perhaps.

Your systems of belief will of course attract certain kinds of thoughts, with their trails of emotional experience. A steady barrage of hateful, revengeful thoughts should actually lead you to look for the beliefs from which they are gaining their strength.

[...] They express emotional reactions to beliefs. [...] She is to say, “I feel inferior,” and at the same time to understand that the feeling is not a statement of fact but of emotion. [...]

Experiencing your emotions as such is not the same as accepting them as statements of fact about your own existence. Andrea is then supposed to ask, “Why do I feel so inferior?” If you deny the validity of the emotion itself and pretend it away, then you will never be led to question the beliefs behind it.

At the same time all beliefs are communicated to others, not only through quite unconscious bodily mechanisms, but telepathically. [...] (Pause.) All of the abilities of the inner self will be brought to bear to materialize the image of your beliefs, regardless of what they ought to be. The “proper” emotions will be generated, bringing about those body states that exist in your conscious mind.

[...] Pause.) The nature of your personal beliefs in a large measure directs the kinds of emotions you will have at any given time. You will feel aggressive, happy, despairing, or determined according to events that happen to you, your beliefs about yourself in relation to them, and your ideas of who and what you are. You will not understand your emotions unless you know your beliefs. It will seem to you that you feel aggressive or upset without reason, or that your feelings sweep down upon you without cause if you do not learn to listen to the beliefs within your own conscious mind, for they generate their own emotions.

Many such philosophies make you cower at the idea of entertaining “negative” thoughts or emotions. In all cases the clues to your emotional experience and behavior lie in your systems of belief: some more evident to you than others, but all available to you consciously. If you believe that you are of little merit, inferior and filled with guilt, then you may react in several ways according to your personal background and the framework in which you accepted those beliefs. [...]

[...] Your beliefs will dictate your very interpretation of various kinds of emotions. [...] It can be the most arousing and therapeutic emotion under certain circumstances. You can then realize that you have cowered before contradictory beliefs for years, rise up in anger against them, and quite literally begin a new life of freedom. [...]

Few beliefs are intellectual alone. When you are examining the contents of your conscious mind, you must learn, or recognize, the emotional and imaginative connotations that are connected with a given idea. There are various ways of altering the belief by substituting its opposite. [...] You generate the emotion opposite the one that arises from the belief you want to change, and you turn your imagination in the opposite direction from the one dictated by the belief. At the same time you consciously assure yourself that the unsatisfactory belief is an idea about reality and not an aspect of reality itself.

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. Beliefs automatically mobilize your emotional and imaginative powers.

(9:46.) Largely, but not completely, your imagination follows your beliefs, as do your emotions. [...] It will stop when the hurt stops, and the emotion behind the cry will automatically change into another. But if the child discovers that a prolonged cry after the event gets extra attention and consideration, then it will begin to extend the emotion.

(11:09.) Then, according to your beliefs, you deal with the physical dilemma as it is presented in those terms. [...] Your own unique and highly private beliefs help bring about the overall emotional condition. The pool of emotional energy into which your emotions flow is still composed of unalike charges, but generally speaking, the individual contribution of all those participating will fall into a coherent pattern that gives impetus and direction to the storm, providing the charge and the power behind it.

Now: Natural disasters are brought about more at an emotional level than at a belief level, though beliefs have an important part to play, for they generate the emotions to begin with.

As your conscious beliefs determine your bodily condition, and as your body is maintained at an unconscious level (though in line with your beliefs), so natural catastrophes are the result of the beliefs that give rise to emotional states which are then automatically transformed into exterior atmospheric conditions.

The only way out of it 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.

Your beliefs automatically attract the appropriate emotions. They reinforce themselves through imagination; and at the risk of repeating myself, because this is so important: Imagination and feeling follow your beliefs. [...]

As mentioned (in the 614th session in Chapter Two), 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 beliefs are physically materialized. [...] 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.

It is impossible to tell you of the emotional reality of such an experience. [...] Such bridge beliefs often allow you to perceive the “invisible” beliefs mentioned this evening, and these can then appear to you as a revelation. On second thought, however, you will realize that another belief blocked that one from your view, but that you were always aware of it; and that in a strange way it was also invisible because you took it for granted. You did not consider it a belief about reality but as reality itself, and never questioned it.

(Long pause.) The emotions connected with these bridge beliefs may indeed surprise you, but standing upon such unifying structures you are also free to let the emotional flow sweep past, feeling it, but aware for the first time, perhaps, of the origin of those feelings in your beliefs, and no longer afraid of being swept away by them.

(Pause.) At such times there can also be strong emotional content, as of finally triumphing over psychological chaos, or even of rising from the dead. You can suggest to yourself the emergence of such bridge beliefs. [...] Various core beliefs, not well assimilated, will give you conflicting self-images. [...] The latter usually involves contrary core beliefs that are alternately pulling you one way and then the other.

[...] Your emotions trigger your memories, and they organize your associations. Your emotions are generated through your beliefs. They attach themselves so that certain beliefs and emotions seem almost synonymous.

[...] At the same time, such beliefs convince them that the self is evil. These beliefs must be weeded out. [...] The psyche’s organizations are broader, and in their way more rational than most of your conscious beliefs about the self.

(9:40.) The next time an opportunity arises, and you recognize the presence of a fairly strong emotion in yourself, then let your associations flow. [...] You will clearly see the connection between the emotion and event, but others will not be so obvious. [...]

Your environment is the physical picture of your thoughts, emotions and beliefs made visible. Since your thoughts, emotions and beliefs move through space and time, you therefore affect physical conditions separate from you.

You form the fabric of your experience through your own beliefs and expectations. These personal ideas about yourself and the nature of reality will affect your thoughts and emotions. You take your beliefs about reality as truth, and often do not question them. [...]

Once you understand this you have only to learn to examine the nature of your beliefs, for these will automatically cause you to feel and think in certain fashions. Your emotions follow your beliefs. [...]

(10:05.) The inner mechanics of emotions and beliefs are complicated, but these are individuals who feel that physical life has failed them. [...] They think in black and white, and conflicts between their emotions, and their beliefs about their emotions, lead them to seek some kind of shelter in a rigid belief system that will give them rules to go by. [...]

[...] Man experiences ambitions, desires, likes and dislikes of a highly emotional nature — and at the same time he has intellectual beliefs about himself, his feelings, and the world. [...]

The organization of your feelings, beliefs, and intents directs the focus about which your physical reality is built. [...] If you believe in the sinfulness of the world, for instance, then you will search out from normal sense data those facts that confirm your belief. But beyond that, at other levels you also organize your mental world in such a way that you attract to yourself events that — again — will confirm your beliefs.

Many of those old beliefs, however, still have an emotional hold, and some helpful beliefs have been overdone, or carried on too long. Because you see so clearly the failings of your age, you each have a tendency to exaggerate them, or rather to concentrate upon them, so that you do not have an emotional feeling of safety.

[...] You were able to do something few people can: leap intuitively and mentally above your own period—to discard intellectually and mentally, and sometimes emotionally, the shortsighted, unfortunate religious, scientific and social beliefs of your fellows.

[...] Your abilities would meet some conflict in terms of religious, sexual, and social beliefs. [...] To meet with these, Ruburt for example adopted certain beliefs that at various times would be helpful.

For now, I simply want to suggest that all such beliefs should be understood and dismissed as soon as possible. We hope to show how most natural health-promoting beliefs can be applied to all mental, physical, or emotional illnesses or difficulties. I want to assure you that regardless of your circumstances, age, or sex, you can indeed start over, rearousing from within yourself those earlier, more innocent expectations, feelings and beliefs. [...]

The thoughts and beliefs that we want to rearouse are those that were often predominant in childhood, as mentioned earlier in this book. They are spiritual, mental, emotional and biological beliefs that are innately present in the birth of each creature. [...]

There is no need to search endlessly into the past of this life or any other, for the “original” causes for beliefs. Making a change in the present of a certain kind will automatically alter all beliefs “across the board,” so to speak. [...] You react to your beliefs habitually, often unthinkingly, and in usual ideas of time, and in your experience of it — you must allow yourself “some time” to change that habitual behavior.

Ready arguments for the other side have been taken for granted by him emotionally. One strong portion of him knows well that Christian theology is far from any entire answer, that Christ was not the son of the only God; the other portion of Ruburt is still affected by those beliefs, and he did not realize it.

The emotional beliefs therefore could not be reached. [...]

Because they were formed at a time before the intellectual and intuitive abilities developed, and were not a problem until the intellectual and intuitive abilities seemed to come upon a system of thought that was in opposition to the underlying emotional beliefs. [...]

(“Many of those old beliefs still have an emotional hold, however, and some helpful beliefs have also been overdone, or carried on too long. Because you can see so clearly the failings of your age, you each have a tendency to exaggerate them, or rather to concentrate upon them, so that you do not have an emotional feeling of safety. [...]

[...] You were able to do something few people can: leap intuitively and mentally above your own period — to discard intellectually and mentally, and sometimes emotionally, the shortsighted, unfortunate religious, scientific, and social beliefs of your fellows.

[...] Thoughts, feelings, or beliefs appear to be secondary, subjective — or somehow not real — and they seem to rise in response to an already established field of physical data.

Later we will discuss contrary feelings, thoughts, and emotions. I want to substitute beliefs for emotions —

[...] Now this is to be a new future, brought on as the result of healthier, wiser beliefs and attitudes. The “future” that he feared, he must understand, no longer exists — for it was composed of beliefs he no longer holds.

[...] He convinced that portion that the old beliefs about good and evil, self-destruction, and the existence of the Catholic devil, were not valid. In the dream he triumphs over those beliefs.

[...] Feelings and emotion caused tensions under certain conditions that are not necessarily physically apparent, but that change the body. [...] So do beliefs. Ruburt is completely changing emotional and intellectual beliefs of long standing. His poor mobility did not exist alone, but reached back to an archaeology, say, of beliefs that affected his sinuses, jaw pressure, and so forth.

[...] More than that, however, your question of course reflects your cultural beliefs and assumptions, and so you do not realize that in some ways such conscious knowledge of the body’s workings might limit rather than expand concepts and experience of the body and the self.

[...] For example, in your culture some people feel that there is a struggle between their hearts and their heads, a conflict between emotion and reason, in other words. [...]

I see that expanse of time (that four years and five months), as being really an emotional bridge between Jane’s poem in Note 6 for the 936th session and the two she wrote in March 1977. All three are entirely consistent not only with her beliefs and emotions, but with my own. For I feel now, in connection with the two “new” poems, the same profound sensations I had concerning Jane’s challenges when I wrote in Note 6: “Perhaps it was her poetic art of expression that helped me identify so strongly with her emotions, but I suddenly felt that even I had never really understood the myriad depths of her challenges and her reactions to them.” All three poems, then, are of a piece, in which she explores across time and emotion different facets of a common set of beliefs about friendly psychic colleagues and feelings of safety.

To me, Jane’s sensing of those “cousins of consciousness,” those “friendly colleagues,” and her very cautious reactions to her inner knowing, are clear signs of the consistency of her beliefs and her work through the years. [...]

[...] Regardless of what he believes about himself, his complete belief in me will only be arrived at intuitively and emotionally.

This is the only basis for any belief, regardless of rationalization. [...] The intellect will never, alone, convince the emotions of any fact.

[...] You are usually told that your emotions or beliefs or system of values have nothing to do with the unfortunate circumstances that beset you.

[...] A good physician is a changer of beliefs. [...] Whatever methods or drugs he uses will not be effective unless this change of belief takes place.

[...] Behind this is the psychic pattern of beliefs in which the patient often assigns to the doctor the powers of knowledge and wisdom that his beliefs have taught him he does not have. [...]