“Seth material” search engine (Jane Roberts)

(After supper Jane began to show signs of going into an altered state of consciousness. She started talking about her “silky” skin, and the luxurious feeling of her sweater against her back. She’d had similar feelings preceding the last session, too, although to a lesser degree; see the appropriate notes. Now, her already acute hearing began to magnify sounds — the rustle of cellophane as she opened a pack of cigarettes, the quality of my voice as I talked to our cat, Willy, the noise of my handling the newspaper. “But words are such poor things to describe the effects,” she said more than once. “They’re too trite….”

(Her situation reminded me of several transcendent states she’d achieved during the last year, so I suggested she go along with it. Jane said she preferred to hold the session. She went into the living room to read, and found the magazine she picked up “heavier” than it should be. Gradually her perception of the beauty in ordinary things became considerably heightened. She’d planned to turn her easy chair around so that she could look out at the street lights, but instead she found herself admiring the bookcase that the chair already faced. By now her voice had acquired a hard-to-define richer quality, joyous but subdued.

Andrea never doubted the “fact” that life was more difficult for a woman than for a man. (See the 643rd session.) When she examined her beliefs this escaped her. The invisible belief, however, affected her behavior and experience. Now she understands it and can deal with it as belief, and not as a condition of reality over which she has no control.

(Pause.) At such times there can also be strong emotional content, as of finally triumphing over psychological chaos, or even of rising from the dead. You can suggest to yourself the emergence of such bridge beliefs. The conscious idea itself represents a statement of intent. Various core beliefs, not well assimilated, will give you conflicting self-images. Now there is a difference between freely experimenting with and enjoying various styles of dress, attitudes and behavior — and finding yourself “lost” in a compulsion to change your appearance, attitude and behavior. The latter usually involves contrary core beliefs that are alternately pulling you one way and then the other.

(Jane thought she was experiencing the results of her own work with bridge beliefs, since receiving the material in advance, so I asked her if Seth would say something about her personal reactions for this chapter. “All right. I’m waiting now,” she said, and closed her eyes. Resume at 10:43.)

Through this belief he viewed all of his experience, correlating it; he encouraged those impulses that furthered it, and impeded those that did not. Now: Because of this particular temperament he put all of his eggs in one basket, so to speak. Those of you who do the same thing will see yourselves in one particular way, whatever it is. You will primarily organize your experience along definite lines. It may be your sex role or your professional role. You may see yourself as a mother or a father first of all, as a teacher, an editor, or as a “man’s man.” You will, however, emphasize one certain quality above all others — your athletic nature, your spiritual bent, whatever it may be.

Now such concentration is excellent if the original concept continues to expand with your experience, and of itself is not limiting to a strong degree. You may see yourself primarily as a mother. Initially, that may simply involve taking care of your children at home. But if that idea of yourself remains limited then it may preclude, say, even being a wife to your husband, deny you many complementary interests, and prevent expansion of your personality in other areas.

Dialogues (see the 639th session in Chapter Ten) is now a book, just completed, but it also represented a movement of the self through a question-and-answer format, through which Ruburt recognized and faced many diverse beliefs. Each reader can utilize the same method whether or not artistic achievement is also involved, through objectifying personal beliefs in a dialogue form. This also happens frequently in the dream state, when you allow your natural creativity so much freedom. Often there are dreams in which “you” are two separate people, either strangers or familiar, each asking questions of the other.

Using it, he is only now in the process of assimilating the newly available energy. He understands that he is the self who holds all of those beliefs, and does not identify so completely with the one core belief any longer. That association was what had prevented its natural motion and expansion earlier.

Now you may take a break.

Now: Ruburt also saw that he believed he had to justify his existence through his writing. This because he did not trust the basic right of his being as it existed, and does, in space and time. These old beliefs had not caught up to his newer ones.