“Seth material” search engine (Jane Roberts)

Therefore they are accepted without question too often. They are not recognized as beliefs about reality, but are instead considered characteristics of reality itself. (Pause.) Frequently such ideas appear indisputable, so a part of you that it does not occur to you to speculate about their validity. They become invisible assumptions, but they nevertheless color and form your personal experience.

Some people, for example, do not question their religious beliefs but accept them as fact. Others find it comparatively easy to recognize such inner assumptions when they appear in a religious context, but are quite blind to them in other areas.

Your conscious mind is always trying to give you a clear picture, but you often allow preconceived ideas to block out this intelligence. It has been fashionable to blame the subconscious for personality problems and difficulties, the idea being that early events, charged and mysterious, lodged there. In this country several generations grew up believing that the subconscious portions of the personality were unreliable, filled with negative energy, and contained only locked-up unpleasant episodes best forgotten.

The concept of original sin was a very poor, limited and distorted one, but at least along with it went rather simple procedures: Through baptism you might be saved, or through certain words or sacraments or rituals redemption could be found. (See the Gospel according to Mark, 1:1–11, for instance.)

(Pause at 10:05. Certainly these sessions aren’t “spiritual” in usual terms. Still in trance, Jane lit a cigarette. Her beer was gone, but since I had a little left in my glass she reached over and helped herself.²)

Then let yourself experience. If you are used to terms like meditation, try to forget the term during this procedure. Do not use any name. Free yourself from concepts, and experience the being of yourself and the motion of your own vitality. Do not question, “Is this right? Am I doing it correctly? Am I feeling what I should feel?” This is the book’s first exercise for you. You are not to use other people’s criteria. There are no standards but your own feelings.

The stuff, the space outside of your body, is composed of the same elements, but in different proportions. There is a constant physical interchange between the structure you call your body and the space outside it; chemical interactions, basic exchanges without which life as you know it would be impossible.

To hold your breath is to die. Breath, which represents the most intimate and most necessary of your physical sensations, must flow out from what you are, passing into the world that seems to be not you. Physically, portions of you leave your body constantly and intermix with the elements. You know what happens when adrenalin is released through the bloodstream. It stirs you up and prepares you for action. But in other ways the adrenalin does not just stay in your body. It is cast into the air and it affects the atmosphere, though it is transformed.

Any of your emotions liberate hormones, but these also leave you as your breath leaves you; and in that respect you can say that you release chemicals into the air that then affect it.

Now: Later we will discuss some of the reasons for your beliefs, but for now I simply want you to recognize them.

(12:15.) These are all beliefs held by many people. Those who have them will meet them in experience. Physical data will always seem to reinforce the beliefs, therefore, but the beliefs formed the reality. We are going to attempt to knock down such limiting concepts.