“Seth material” search engine (Jane Roberts)

Give us a moment, then… Imagination also plays an important part in your subjective life, as it gives mobility to your beliefs. It is one of the motivating agencies that helps transform your beliefs into physical experience. It is vital therefore that you understand the interrelationship between ideas and imagination. In order to dislodge unsuitable beliefs and establish new ones, you must learn to use your imagination to move concepts in and out of your mind. The proper use of imagination can then propel ideas in the directions you desire.

(My mother lives with my brother and his family in a small community in upstate New York, near Rochester, and Jane and I had spent the weekend visiting one and all. During our drive back to Elmira this morning Jane said, “Somebody’s working on Seth’s book, I can tell you that. I keep getting snatches of it. It’s about imagination and beliefs, I think, and how they interact — only there’s a lot more to it. Well,” she added, pleased, “it’s nice to know the work’s being done….”)

Few beliefs are intellectual alone. [...] There are various ways of altering the belief by substituting its opposite. [...] You generate the emotion opposite the one that arises from the belief you want to change, and you turn your imagination in the opposite direction from the one dictated by the belief. At the same time you consciously assure yourself that the unsatisfactory belief is an idea about reality and not an aspect of reality itself.

Behind this would be the belief that any hurt was inherently a disaster. Such a belief could originate from an overanxious mother, for instance. If such a mother’s imagination followed her belief — as of course it would — then she would immediately perceive a great potential danger to her child in the smallest threat. Both through the mother’s actions, and telepathically, the child would receive such a message and react according to those understood beliefs.

(9:35.) So it is quite necessary that an acquiescence to belief does exist, particularly in early life. There is no reason, though, for an individual to be bound by childhood beliefs or experience. The nature of some such beliefs is that while seemingly obvious ones are recognized as harmful or foolish, others connected to them may not be so easily understood.

[...] (Pause.) Your beliefs always change to some extent. [...] By thirty, hopefully, you have dismissed such a belief, though it fit in very well and was necessary to you in your childhood. If your mother reinforced this belief telepathically and verbally through dire pictures of the potential danger involved in street crossing, however, then you would also carry within you that emotional fear, and perhaps entertain imaginative considerations of possible accident.

Your emotions and your imagination both follow your belief. When the belief vanishes then the same emotional context is no longer entertained, and your imagination turns in other directions. Beliefs automatically mobilize your emotional and imaginative powers.

YOUR IMAGINATION AND YOUR BELIEFS, AND A FEW WORDS ABOUT THE ORIGIN OF YOUR BELIEFS

(Pause at 9:12.) Chapter Four: “Your Imagination and Your Beliefs, and a Few Words About the Origin of Your Beliefs.”

[...] These are directional beliefs that you receive from your parents, orienting you in ways that they feel are safe. Cushioned with these beliefs the child can be safe and satisfy its own curiosity, develop its abilities, and throw its full energy in clearly stated areas of activity.

[...] It may not be so obvious that many of your present actions are caused by a belief in guilt. We will have much to say about the ways in which your beliefs can be connected, simply because you are not used to examining them.

[...] Since the parents are bigger and stronger and fulfill so many of its needs, it will attempt to bring its experience into line with their expectations and beliefs. While it is generally quite natural for the child to cry or feel “badly” when hurt, this inclination can be carried through belief to such an extent that prolonged feelings of desolation are adopted as definite behavior patterns.