“Seth material” search engine (Jane Roberts)

REALITY AND PERSONAL BELIEFS

We will resume dictation. Chapter Two: “Reality and Personal Beliefs.”

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. They seem self-explanatory. They appear in your mind as statements of fact, far too obvious for examination.

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.

(9:45.) It is far simpler to recognize your own beliefs in regard to religion, politics or similar subjects, than it is to pinpoint your deepest beliefs about yourself and who and what you are — particularly in relationship with your own life.

Many individuals are completely blind to their own beliefs about themselves, and the nature of reality. Your own conscious thoughts will give you excellent clues. Often you will find yourself refusing to accept certain thoughts that come to your mind because they conflict with other usually accepted ideas.

The doors to the inner self were to be shut tight. Only lengthy psychoanalysis could or should open them. The normal individual felt that he had best leave such areas alone, so in cutting off these portions of the self, barriers were also set up against the joy of the inner spontaneous self. People felt divorced from the core of their own reality.

About the same time that the idea of the unsavory subconscious arose so strongly, the idea of the soul went out the window. Millions of people therefore believed in a reality in which they were deprived of the idea of a soul, and burdened by the concept of a very unreliable, if not definitely evil, subconscious. They saw themselves as vulnerable solitary points of egos, riding perilously and unprotected upon the tumultuous waves of involuntary processes.

Now first of all, there are no limitations or divisions to the self, though for purposes of discussion a word like “ego” may be used here because you understand what you think it means. You can indeed depend upon seemingly unconscious portions of yourself. As you will see later, you can become more and more consciously aware, therefore bringing into your consciousness larger and larger portions of yourself.

Each person experiences a unique reality, different from any other individual’s. This reality springs outward from the inner landscape of thoughts, feelings, expectations and beliefs. If you believe that the inner self works against you rather than for you, then you hamper its functioning — or rather, you force it to behave in a certain way because of your beliefs.

The conscious mind is meant to make clear judgments about your position in physical reality. Often false beliefs will prevent it from making these, for the egotistically held ideas will cloud its clear vision.

You Make Your Own Reality.

To understand yourself and what you are, you can learn to experience yourself directly apart from your beliefs about yourself. What I would like each reader to do is to sit quietly. Close your eyes. Try to sense within yourself the deep feeling-tones that I mentioned earlier (in the 613th session in Chapter One). This is not difficult to do.

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.

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.

Physical storms, then, are caused by such interactions. I am telling you that you form your own reality once again, and this includes the physical weather — which is the result, en masse, of your individual reactions.

Next: I can never do what I want to do.

(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.

Within you is the ability to change your ideas about reality and about yourself, to create a personal living experience that is fulfilling to yourself and others. I would like you to write down your beliefs about yourself as you become aware of them. Later you can use this list in a way that you do not now suspect.