“Seth material” search engine (Jane Roberts)

(Pause at 9:21.) Those given to such practices — constant examination of the past in order to discover what is wrong in the present — too often miss the point. Instead, they constantly reinforce the negative experience from which they are trying to escape. Their initial problems were caused precisely as a result of the same kind of thinking. A great many unsatisfactory conditions result because individuals become frightened at various periods in their lives, doubt themselves, and begin to concentrate upon “negative” aspects.

You have been taught that you are at the mercy of previous events, so your idea of looking for the source of personal difficulty is to examine the past, but — to find what you did wrong there, or what mistakes occurred there, or what inadequate interpretations were made there! Again, regardless of what you have been taught, the point of power is in the present; and again, your present beliefs will be used to structure your recollections.

The question, “What is wrong with me?” will only lead you to create further limitations, and to reinforce those that you do have, through exaggerating such activities in the present and projecting them into the future.

(“No.” Pause at 9:56. Then, intensely:) To rid yourself of annoying restrictions then, my dear friend, you repattern your past from the present. Whatever your circumstances, you use the past as a rich source, looking through it for your successes, restructuring it. When you search it looking for what is wrong, then you become blind to what was right, in those terms, so that the past only mirrors the shortcomings that now face you.

Individuals can go from psychologist to psychologist, from self-therapy to self-therapy, always with the same question: “What is wrong?” The question itself becomes a format through which experience is seen, and itself represents one of the main reasons for all limitations, physical, psychic or spiritual. (See the 624th session in Chapter Five.)

At one point or another the individual ceased concentrating upon what was right in certain personal areas, and began to focus upon and magnify specific “lacks.” With all good intentions, then, various solutions are looked for, but all based upon the premise that something is wrong.

Such effects will occur however only if you cease looking into the past “for what is wrong,” and stop reinforcing your negative experience. These same principles can be used in any area of your life, and in each you are choosing from a variety of probable events.