“Seth material” search engine (Jane Roberts)

Your natural athletes, for example, show through their physical expertise certain ideal body conditions. They may personify great agility or strength or power: individual attributes, physical ideals (pause) which are held up to others for their appreciation, and which signify, to whatever extent, abilities inherent in the species itself.

Your searches toward understanding excellent performance in any area — your idealisms — are all spiritually and biologically ingrained. If many of the conditions we have mentioned in this book are less than ideal in your society, then you can as an individual begin to change those situations. You do this by accepting the rightness of your own personhood. You do this by discarding ideas of unworthiness and powerlessness, no matter what their sources. You do this by beginning to observe your own impulses, by trusting your own direction. You start wherever you are, today. Period.

(9:42.) You do not dwell upon the unfortunate conditions in your environment, but you do take steps in your own life to express your ideals in whatever way is given. Those ways are multitudinous.

Generally speaking, for example, if you are seriously worried about a physical condition, go to a doctor, because your own beliefs may overfrighten you otherwise. Begin with innocuous but annoying physical conditions, however, and try to work those out for yourself. Try to discover why you are bothered. When you have a headache or a simple stomach upset, or if you have a chronic, annoying but not serious condition, such as trouble with your sinuses, or if you have hay fever — in those situations, remind yourself that your body does indeed have the capacity to heal itself.

Do the exercises in my book, The Nature of Personal Reality, to discover what conditions of a mental nature, or of psychological origin, are causing you distress. Instead of taking an aspirin for a headache, sit down, breathe quietly, and remind yourself that you are an integral part of the universe. Allow yourself to feel a sense of belonging with nature. Such an exercise can often relieve a headache in no time. But each such experience will allow you to build up a sense of trust in your own body’s processes.

Such action serves as a safeguard so that you do not overemphasize the gaps that may exist in yourself or in society, between the reality and the ideal condition. Many people want to change the world for the better, but that ideal seems so awe-inspiring that they think they can make no headway unless they perform some great acts of daring or heroism, or envision themselves in some political or religious place of power, or promote an uprising or rebellion. The ideal seems so remote and unreachable that, again, sometimes any means, however reprehensible, eventually can seem justified (see Session 850, for example). To change the world for the better, you must begin by changing your own life. There is no other way.