“Seth material” search engine (Jane Roberts)

She told Ruburt that she felt herself to be an inferior person, unable to cope, an individual who was not able to hold her own with her co-workers or the world at large.

Conscious beliefs focus your attention, channel it and direct your energy so that you can swiftly bring the ideas into your physical experience. They also act as blinders, throwing aside data that cannot be assimilated while preserving the integrity of the beliefs. So our Andrea did not see, or ignored, the smiles that came her way, or the encouragement; and in some cases she even perceived some potentially beneficial events as “negative” — these then were used to further reinforce the belief in her own inferiority.

During the day, Andrea was able to look at both beliefs and see them as opposing ideas that she had held about herself. She believed she was unique and good — and also that she was inferior and bad. At various times one belief would color her experience nearly to the exclusion of the other. Just before this session Andrea called back. She realized that she had indeed set up the situation by not dealing honestly with her own conscious ideas.

Ruburt advised Andrea to accept the validity of such feelings as feelings — not to inhibit them, but to follow their flow with the understanding that they are feelings about reality. As themselves they are real. They express emotional reactions to beliefs. The next time Andrea feels inadequate, for example, she is to actively experience that feeling, realizing that even though she feels inferior this does not mean that she is inferior. She is to say, “I feel inferior,” and at the same time to understand that the feeling is not a statement of fact but of emotion. A different kind of validity is involved.

Experiencing your emotions as such is not the same as accepting them as statements of fact about your own existence. Andrea is then supposed to ask, “Why do I feel so inferior?” If you deny the validity of the emotion itself and pretend it away, then you will never be led to question the beliefs behind it.