“Seth material” search engine (Jane Roberts)

We will resume dictation…. You will react, therefore, to all the information that you receive according to your conscious beliefs concerning the nature of reality. The deeper portions of the self do not have to take the ego’s idea of time into consideration, so these portions of the self also deal with data that would ordinarily escape the ego’s perception, perhaps until a certain “point” of ego time was reached.

Your own idea of the perilous nature of existence becomes so strong that the ego allows this data to emerge, even though it is “out of time,” because your fearful beliefs convince it that you must be on guard. The incidents do not even have to involve you. From all the unconscious telepathic and clairvoyant data available, however, you will be aware of this particular grouping, and it will only serve to reinforce your idea that existence is above all perilous.

If this information becomes available in the dream state you may then say, “I am frightened of dreams. My bad dreams so often come true.” So you try to inhibit memory of your dreams. Instead you should examine your conscious beliefs, for they are so strong that they are causing you not only to focus upon calamity in the physical world, but to use your inner abilities to the same end.

It may be easy for you to see beliefs that are invisible to others in themselves. Reading this book, you may be able to point at friends or acquaintances and see clearly that their ideas are invisible beliefs which limit their experience — and yet be blind to your own invisible beliefs, which you take so readily as truth or characteristics of reality.

Your sense data, again, will most definitely reinforce your ideas. You will also react clairvoyantly and telepathically to inner information at an unconscious level that is, once more, “collected” under the organization of your quite conscious concepts concerning existence in general, and your own in particular. So you are locked into physical situations that are corroborated by the great evidence of sense data — and of course it is convincing because it reflects so beautifully, so creatively, and so actively, your own ideas and beliefs, whether they are positive or negative.

(Pause, one of few, at 9:50.) I expect that by now my readers have at least begun to examine their beliefs, and perhaps obtained a glimpse of some invisible ones that had been accepted before as definite aspects of reality.

Now if you are honest with your lists, you will finally come to what I call core beliefs, strong ideas about your own existence. Many other subsidiary beliefs, that earlier seemed separate from each other, should now appear quite clearly as being offshoots of core beliefs. They seem logical only in their relationship to a core idea. Once the core belief is understood to be a false one, the others will fall away.

It is the core belief which is strong enough to so focus your perception that you perceive from the physical world only those events that correlate with it. It is also the strength of the core belief that draws up from the vast bank of inner knowledge only those events that seem to fit within its organization.

Now let me give you a brief example of a core belief. It is a blanket belief: human nature is inherently evil. This is a core belief. About it will spring events that only serve to reinforce it. Experiences — both personal and global — will come into the perception of a person who holds this belief, that will only serve to deepen it further.

From all the available physical data of newspapers, television, letters and private communication, he or she will concentrate only upon those issues that “prove” that point. Suspicion of others will grow, to say nothing about the individual’s personal distrust. The belief will reach into the most intimate areas of his or her life, and finally no evidence will seem to be available to disprove it.

This is a sample of an invisible core belief at its worst. A person holding it will not trust a mate, family, friends, colleagues, country, or the world in general.

Another more personal core belief: “My life is worthless. What I do is meaningless.” Now a person who holds such an idea will ordinarily not recognize it as an invisible belief. Instead he or she may emotionally feel that life has no meaning, that individual action is meaningless, that death is annihilation; and connected to this will be a conglomeration of subsidiary beliefs that deeply affect the family involved, and all those with whom such a person comes in contact.

In writing down your list of personal beliefs, therefore, leave nothing out. Examine the list as though it belonged to someone else. I did not want to imply that you make a list of specifically negative ideas, however. It is of supreme importance that you recognize the existence of joyful beliefs, and take into consideration those elements of your own experience with which you have had success.

You make your own reality. I cannot say this too often. There will be periods where all of your beliefs are at an even par, so to speak. They will agree.

“Wealth is everything.” Now this idea is far from a truth. The person who accepts it completely, though, will be wealthy and in excellent health, and everything will fit in quite well with his beliefs. Yet the idea is still a belief about reality, and so there will be invisible gulfs in his experience of which he is ignorant.

So as your beliefs change there will be alterations in your experience and behavior, and points of stress, creative stress, while you are learning. Our rich man just mentioned may suddenly realize that his belief is limiting, in that he concentrated upon it exclusively so that money and health became his sole aims. The shattered belief may leave him open to illness, which would seem like a negative experience. Yet through the illness he may be led to areas of perception he had earlier denied, and [he may] be enriched in that particular manner.

The shifting of belief may then open him to question his other beliefs, and he realizes that in the area of wealth, for example, he did very well because of his beliefs; but in those others, perhaps deeper experiences opened by his illness, he learns that human experience includes dimensions of reality that had earlier been closed to him, and that these are also easily within his reach — and without the illness that originally brought them forth. A new conglomeration of beliefs might emerge. In the meantime there was stress, but it was creative.

(10:31.) Now here is another example. Your conscious thoughts regulate your health. The persistent idea of illness will make you ill. While you believe that you become ill because of viruses, infections or accidents, then you must go to doctors who operate within that system of belief. And because you believe in their cures, hopefully you will be relieved of your difficulty.

Because you do not understand that your thoughts create illness you will continue to undergo it, however, and new symptoms will appear. You will again return to the doctor. When you are in the process of changing beliefs — when you are beginning to realize that your thoughts and feelings cause illness — then for a while you may not know what to do.

In the larger context you realize that the doctor can at best give you temporary relief, yet you may not be completely convinced as yet of your own ability to change your thoughts; or you may be so cowed by their effectiveness that you are frightened. So there is a period of stress in between beliefs, so to speak, while you dispense with one set and are learning to use another.

The truth is then that you form your reality directly. You react consciously and unconsciously to your beliefs. You collect from the physical universe, and the interior one, data that seems to correlate with your beliefs.

(10:40. Jane’s pace had been consistently faster than in previous sessions on the book. Break was short. Beginning at 10:45, Seth gave several pages of material for me; I’d hardly expected it. Then he wound up the session at 11:20 p.m. with this comment: “Now: Tell Ruburt there will be schools of thought built upon core beliefs. Tell him that.”)