“Seth material” search engine (Jane Roberts)

(9:12. Pause.) The nature of your personal beliefs in a large measure directs the kinds of emotions you will have at any given time. You will feel aggressive, happy, despairing, or determined according to events that happen to you, your beliefs about yourself in relation to them, and your ideas of who and what you are. You will not understand your emotions unless you know your beliefs. It will seem to you that you feel aggressive or upset without reason, or that your feelings sweep down upon you without cause if you do not learn to listen to the beliefs within your own conscious mind, for they generate their own emotions.

Psychology, religion, science — in one way or another, all of these have added to the confusion by stripping the conscious mind of its directing qualities, and viewing it as a stepchild of the self. (Pause.) The schools of “positive thinking” try to remedy the situation, but often do more harm than good because they attempt to force beliefs upon you that you would like to hold, but do not in your present state of confusion.

The harder you try to be “good” in such a case the more inferior you will become in your own mind. What do you think of yourself, your daily life, your body, your relationship with others? Ask yourself these questions. Write down the answers or speak them into a recorder. But in one way or another objectify them.

When you feel the rise of unpleasant emotions, take a moment and make an effort to identify their source. The answers are far more available than you may have previously believed. Accept such feelings as your own in the moment. Do not shove them underneath, ignore them or try to substitute what you think of as good thoughts.

First be aware of the reality of your feelings. As you become more aware of your beliefs over a period of time, you will see how they bring forth certain feelings automatically. A man who is sure of himself is not angry at every slight done him, nor does he carry grudges. A man who fears for his own worth, however, is furious under such conditions. The free flow of your emotions will always lead you back to your conscious beliefs if you do not impede them.

(Pause.) No one can do this for you. You may believe that good mental health means being always cheerful, resolute and kind, and never crying or showing disappointment. That belief alone can lead you to deny quite natural dimensions of human experience, and to impede the flow of emotions that could otherwise cleanse both your body and your mind. If you are convinced that feelings are dangerous, then again that belief itself will generate a fear of all of them, and you may become almost panic-stricken if you display anything but the most “reasonable” calm behavior.

To some degree we will touch upon those dilemmas in this book. In your society and to some extent in others, the natural communication of aggression has broken down. You confuse violence with aggression, and do not understand aggression’s creative activity or its purpose as a method of communication to prevent violence.

His society teaches him that such qualities are feminine. He spends his life trying to hide what he thinks of as aggressive — violent — behavior, and trying to be understanding and kind instead. The stereotype is of course unrealistic, having to do with distorted concepts concerning the male and the female, but here we will merely consider the aspects of aggressiveness. Because he is trying to be so understanding our man inhibits the expression of many of the normal irritations that would serve as a natural system of communication between, say, his superior and himself at work, or perhaps with the members of his family at home.

The fear of your own emotions can do far more damage than their expression, because the apprehension builds up a charge that intensifies the energy behind them.

When a man or a woman always smiles at you, the smile can be like a mask. You do not know whether or not you are communicating with such a person. The sound of the voice, again, follows its own patterns, and natural aggression should and will color it at times.

Here, often, and for various reasons, you find a hidden and distorted sense of power that says, “I am so powerful that I could kill you with my thought, and yet I refuse to do so.” No one, and no one thought, is that powerful. If thoughts alone could kill, you would not have the overpopulation problem!