“Seth material” search engine (Jane Roberts)

Remember that ideas are as natural as the weather. They follow patterns, then, and obey certain laws even as more strictly physical phenomena do. Unfortunately, no one examines the nature of mental reality from such a viewpoint. You will be born in the midst of certain mass beliefs, and these may vary according to the country of your nativity. As you come into your body with all of its physical surroundings, so at birth do you emerge into a rich natural psychological environment in which beliefs and ideas are every bit as real.

As you become more proficient at using your conscious mind, then of course you examine the beliefs that surround you, even as you question and often move out of your native environment. You may migrate to a climate in which the prevailing ideas suit you better, as well as the weather.

Regardless, there are certain tendencies, mental stances, that you will take about yourself, your body and your life to one degree or another. Many of these will be directly or indirectly connected with old myths and beliefs of your forefathers. Your ideas of good and evil as applied to health and illness are highly important, for instance. (Pause.) Few can escape putting value judgments in such areas. If you consider illness as a kind of moral stigma, then you will simply add an unneeded quality to any condition of ill health.

If on the other hand you carry the idea too far — that illness can also be a learning process — then you can fall into the other extreme, glorifying sickness or disease as a necessary ennobling experience in which the body is purged so that the soul can be saved.

What sin did the poor person or the sick person commit? That question, often asked unconsciously — if not consciously — brings you back to beliefs in punishment that have nothing to do with the concept of natural guilt, but with those distortions placed upon it. There is also a connection with misinterpretation of the Bible. Christ as you think of him was simply saying that you form your own reality. He tried to rise above the idea-systems of those times, yet even he had to use them, and so the connotations of sin and punishment distorted the message given.

It is impossible to separate your daily experience in any of its aspects from your beliefs and those judgments that you place upon them. The beliefs boil down to your ideas of right and wrong, and they involve all of your attitudes concerning illness and health, wealth and poverty, the relationships of the races, religious conflicts, and more important, your intimate day-by-day psychological reality.

Now: I outlined some opposing ideas held by many people — all involving concepts of good or evil being applied in areas in which they do not belong.