“Seth material” search engine (Jane Roberts)

(During the last few days, Jane has felt that she’s been picking up “advance” material from Seth on his book. She’s made some notes about it. One of the phrases that we think evocative is “bridge beliefs.”

I have often stated that the mind-body relationship is one system. The thoughts are as necessary to the whole system as the body’s cells are. Ruburt correctly interpreted an analogy I gave him in which I compared thoughts to individual cells, and belief systems to the physical organs, which are composed of cells. The organs obviously are stationary in the body, though the cells within them die and are reborn.

Belief systems are as necessary and natural as physical organs are. In fact, their purpose is to help you direct the functioning of your biological being. You give no conscious thought to the coming and going of cells within your organs. Left alone, your thoughts will come and go through your belief systems just as naturally; and ideally, they will balance out, maintaining their own health and directing your body so that its innate therapies take place.

Your systems of belief will of course attract certain kinds of thoughts, with their trails of emotional experience. A steady barrage of hateful, revengeful thoughts should actually lead you to look for the beliefs from which they are gaining their strength.

You cannot do this by ignoring the validity of the thoughts as your experience, however (very intensely), by trying to shove them under the rug of a superficial optimism. Such habitual, unhappy thoughts will bring about the same kind of physical experience, but it is your own system of beliefs that you must examine.

Fear, faced and felt with its bodily sensations and the thoughts that go along with it, will automatically bring about its own state of resolution. The conscious system of beliefs behind the impediment will be illuminated, and you will realize that you feel a certain way because you believe an idea that causes and justifies such a reaction.

(9:34.) If you habitually deny the expression of any emotions, to that degree you become alienated not only from your body but from your conscious ideas. You will bury certain thoughts and put up biological armor to prevent you from physically feeling their effects upon your body. In each case the answer lies in your personal system of beliefs, in those strong concepts you hold on an intimate level that brought about the inhibitions to begin with.

Now: It is true that habitual thoughts of love, optimism and self-acceptance are better for you than their opposites; but again, your beliefs about yourself will automatically attract thoughts that are consistent with your ideas. There is as much natural aggressiveness in love as there is in hate. Hate is a distortion of such a normal force, the result of your beliefs.

There are two ways to get at your own conscious beliefs. The most direct is to have a series of talks with yourself. Write down your beliefs in a variety of areas, and you will find that you believe different things at different times. Often there will be contradictions readily apparent. These represent opposing beliefs that regulate your emotions, your bodily condition and your physical experience. Examine the conflicts. Invisible beliefs will appear that unite those seemingly diverse attitudes. Invisible beliefs are simply those of which you are fully aware but prefer to ignore, because they represent areas of strife which you have not been willing to handle thus far. They are quite available once you are determined to examine the complete contents of your conscious mind.

If this strikes you as too intellectual a method, then you can also work backward from your emotions to your beliefs. In any case, regardless of which method you choose, one will lead you to the other. Both approaches require honesty with yourself, and a firm encounter with the mental, psychic and emotional aspects of your current reality.

By recognizing these differences and honestly following the feelings through — in other words, by riding the emotions — you will be led to the beliefs behind them. A series of self-revelations will inevitably result, each leading you to further creative psychological activity. At each stage you will be closer to the reality of your experience than you have ever been.

(10:27.) No matter how open it may seem that you are, you will nevertheless accept certain emotions that you think of as safe, and ignore others, or stop them at particular points, because you are afraid of following them further. (Pause.) This behavior will follow your beliefs, of course. (Long pause.) If you are over forty, for instance, you may tell yourself that age is meaningless, that you enjoy much younger people, that you think young thoughts. You will accept only those emotions that appear to be in keeping with your ideas of youth. You become concerned with the problems of the young. You accept what you think of as optimistic health-giving thoughts. You consider yourself quite emotional, perhaps.

If you desperately try to remain young, it is usually to hide your own beliefs about age, and to negate all of those emotions connected with it. (Pause.) Whenever you refuse to accept the reality of your creaturehood, you also reject aspects of your spirit. The body exists in the world of space and time. The experiences you may encounter in your sixties are as necessary as those in your twenties. Your changing image is supposed to tell you something. When you pretend alterations do not occur you block both biological and spiritual messages.

Each individual must examine his or her individual beliefs, or begin with feelings which will inevitably lead to them. In this area, as in all others, those of you who are proficient verbally might use the method of writing. Either write down your beliefs as they come to you, or make lists of your intellectual and emotional assumptions. You may find that they are quite different.

If you have a physical symptom, do not run away from it. Feel its reality in your body. Let the emotions follow freely. These will lead you, if you allow them to flow, to the beliefs that cause the difficulty. They will take you through many aspects of your own reality that you must face and explore. These methods release your withheld natural aggressiveness. You may feel that you are swamped by emotion, but trust it — again, it is the motion of your being, and it arouses your own creativity. Followed, it will seek the answers to your problems.

You must realize that your conscious mind is competent, its ideas pertinent, and that your own beliefs affect and form your body and your experience.