“Seth material” search engine (Jane Roberts)

(9:45.) When your body and mind are working together then the relationship between the two goes smoothly, and their natural therapeutic systems place you in a state of health and grace. I told you earlier (in the 614th session in Chapter Two, for instance) that your feelings follow the flow of your beliefs, and if this does not seem true to you it is because you are not aware of the contents of your conscious mind. You can close your physical eyes. You can close the eyes of your conscious mind also, and pretend not to see what is there. It is because you do not trust your own basic therapeutic nature, or really understand the conscious or unconscious mind, that you run to so many therapies that originate from without the self.

Music is an exterior representation, and an excellent one, of the life-giving inner sounds that act therapeutically within your body all the time. (See Chapter Five.) The music is a conscious reminder of those deeper inner rhythms, both of sound and of motion. Listening to music that you like will often bring images into your mind that show you your conscious beliefs in different form.

You often avoid this natural treatment, however, and run from frightening conscious thoughts that would in their turn lead you to the source of “negative” beliefs, where they could be faced; you could then travel through them, so to speak, into feelings of joy and victory. Instead, for example, many of you accept the way of drugs, where such feelings and thoughts are thrust upon you, or forced out of you while you are denied the stabilizing comforts of the conscious mind.

Usually they are not analyzed according to your [own] current beliefs. You have been taught to interpret them along the lines of very ritualized procedures. You are told, for instance, that certain objects or images in your dreams have a definite meaning — not necessarily your own, but following whatever psychological, mystical or religious school of thought in which you happen to be interested.

This happens very frequently when you consciously set the problem before yourself, state it clearly, and then drift into sleep. The same thing happens, however, even without such a conscious set. Dreams give you all kinds of information concerning the state of your body, the world at large, and the probable exterior conditions that your present beliefs will bring about.

The most rejuvenating idea of all, and the greatest step to any true illumination, is the realization that your exterior life springs from the invisible world of your reality through your conscious thoughts and beliefs, for then you realize the power of your individuality and identity. You are immediately presented with choices. You can no longer see yourself as a victim of circumstances. Yet the conscious mind arose precisely to open up choices, to free you from a one-road experience, to let you use your creativity to form diversified, varied comprehensions.

Let us make a clear distinction here: Your conscious beliefs direct the flow of unconscious processes which bring your ideas into physical reality, so while your thoughts cause your experience, you are not consciously aware of how this takes place (forcefully).

You cannot, as an instance, tell yourself vehemently, “I want to receive illumination,” and expect it to happen if all of your beliefs actually go in the other direction.

The framework of sex is another natural therapeutic system if you have not already hampered its effectiveness by contrary beliefs. Natural “mystical” experience, unclothed in dogma, is the original religious therapy that is so often distorted in ecclesiastical organizations, but it represents man’s innate recognition of his oneness with the source of his own being, and of his own experience.

The soul is not only dressed in chemical clothes, but wears the apparel woven from all of the elements of the earth. As physical creatures you will be partially changed by any chemical or element, or food or drug that becomes part of your living system, but those effects will follow the nature of your beliefs.

Such dreams will be greatly effective, but only for a short period of time unless the conscious mind faces the beliefs that have been causing the imbalance. The heavy doses of chemicals introduced from the outside, however, give you an entirely different kind of situation and add new stresses. These dilemmas condition consciousness to believe its position to be even more precarious than it was before, and its sense of power and effectiveness is greatly reduced.

(11:44.) The features in a portrait are painted on canvas or board, but your soul is not painted on your body. It enters into and becomes part of it. Physically, you cannot contain all of your identity, and that “free” portion unconsciously creates the flesh, in your terms. Again, you direct its form through your beliefs, but the unconscious part of you does the “work” of producing it.

(Actually it wasn’t quite the end. Seth returned to deliver a page of material in which he briefly discussed Jane’s own work with beliefs, her poetry, and her latest ideas about her psychic abilities; from there he went into our relationship with each other and with our parents.