“Seth material” search engine (Jane Roberts)

Its beliefs about the nature of reality are then given to inner portions of the self. These rely mainly upon the conscious mind’s interpretation of temporal reality. The conscious mind sets the goals and the inner self brings them about, using all its facilities and inexhaustible energy.

The great value of the conscious mind lies precisely in its ability to make decisions and set directions. Its role is dual, however: It is meant to assess conditions both inside and outside, to handle data that comes from the physical world and from the inner portions of the self. It is not a closed system, then.

(10:13.) Many false beliefs therefore are indiscriminately accepted because you have not examined them. You have given the inner self a faulty picture of reality. Since it is the function of the conscious mind to assess physical experience, it [the inner self] hasn’t been able to do its job properly. If the inner portions of the self were supposed to have that responsibility, then you would not need a conscious mind.

Remember, even false beliefs will seem to be justified in terms of physical data, since your experience in the outside world is the materialization of those beliefs. So you must work with the raw material of your ideas, even while your sense data may tell you that a given belief is obviously a truth. To change your experience or any portion of it, then, you must change your ideas. Since you have been forming your own reality all along, the results will follow naturally.

The artist does not identify with the colors he uses. He knows he chooses them, and applies them with a brush. So you paint your reality with your ideas in the same manner. You are not your ideas, nor even your thoughts. You are the self who experiences them. If a painter finds his hands stained with pigment at the end of a day, he can wash the stain off easily, knowing its nature. If you think that limiting thoughts are a portion of you, permanently attached therefore, you will not think of washing them off. You would behave instead like a mad artist who says, “My paints are a part of me. They have stained my fingers, and there is nothing I can do about it.”

No apple tree tries to grow violets. Quite automatically it knows what it is, and the framework of its own identity and existence. (Pause.) You have a conscious mind, but this is only the “topmost” portion of your mind. Much more of “it” is available to you. Much more of your knowledge can be conscious, therefore; but a false belief, a limiting one, is as ambiguous to your nature as any apple tree’s idea that it was a violet plant.

The inner self is embarked upon an exciting endeavor, in which it learns how to translate its reality into physical terms. The conscious mind is brilliantly attuned to physical reality, then, and often so dazzled by what it perceives that it is tempted to think physical phenomena is a cause, rather than a result. Deeper portions of the self always serve to remind it that this is not the case. When the conscious mind accepts too many false beliefs, particularly if it sees that inner self as a danger, then it closes out these constant reminders. When this situation arises the conscious mind feels itself assailed by a reality that seems greater than itself, over which it has no control. The deep feeling of security in which it should be anchored is lost.

(11:40.) The ego is an offshoot of the conscious mind, so to speak. The conscious mind is like a gigantic camera with the ego directing the view and the focus. Left alone, various portions of the identity rise and form the ego, degroup and reform, all the while maintaining a marvelous spontaneity and yet a sense of oneness. (See both sessions in Chapter One.)