“Seth material” search engine (Jane Roberts)

Hypnosis clearly shows in concentrated form the way in which your beliefs affect your behavior in normal life. The various methods simply focus all of your concentration upon a specific area, shutting out any distractions.

Think of the present as a pool of experience drawn from many sources, fed, in your terms, by tributaries from both the past and the future. There are an infinite number of such tributaries (probabilities), and through your beliefs you choose from these, adjusting their currents. For example: If you constantly focus on the belief that your early background was damaging and negative, then only such experiences will flow into your present life from the past. It does no good to say, “But my life was traumatic,” therefore reinforcing the belief. You must in one way or another modify that conviction, or preferably change it entirely — or you will never escape from its effects. This does not mean “lying” to yourself; but if it seems to you that your background held no joys, accomplishments or pleasures, then you are lying to yourself now. You have concentrated upon the negative to such a degree that anything else seems invisible. (See the 644th session in Chapter Eleven.) From the present you have hypnotized yourself, viewing the past not as it was to your experience, but as it appears now in the light of your current beliefs.

You have reconstructed it. So when I tell you to restructure your past, I am not telling you to do something that you have not already done. Hypnosis, again, is merely a state of concentrated attention, in which you focus upon beliefs. Popular demonstrations lead the public to believe that the subject must fall asleep or be completely relaxed, yet this is not the case. The one prerequisite is an intense concentration upon specific incoming data to the exclusion of everything else. Therefore the orders given are clear-cut, to the point. No conflicting information is received, no cross messages.

(10:12.) The shutting out of superfluous data and the narrowing of focus are the two most important ingredients. Relaxation can help simply because the body messages are also quieted, and the mind not concerned with them.

(Pause.) On the other hand, such beliefs can be accepted when it appears that the conscious mind is asleep, or dulled as in periods of shock, or during operations. The focus of attention is narrowed then, and intensified. One of the troubles is that too specific distinctions are made between the conscious and unconscious minds. They interlap. Hypnosis, used properly without the mumbo jumbo usually assigned to it, is an excellent method of inserting new beliefs and getting rid of old ones. This is only true, however, if you realize the power of your conscious mind in that moment, and understand the ability of your consciousness to mobilize unconscious reactions.

Quite without any inductions, you have “hypnotized” yourself into all the beliefs that you have. This simply means that you have consciously accepted them, focused upon them, excluded data to the contrary, narrowed your interests to those specific points, and accordingly activated the unconscious mechanisms that then materialize those convictions through physical experience.

Your reality is the result of a hallucination, if by this you mean that it is only the picture shown by your senses. Physically, of course, your existence is perceived through the senses. In that context corporeal life is an entranced one, with the focus of attention largely concentrated through the senses’ belief in the reality of their sensations. Yet that experience is the image that reality takes for you now, and so in other terms earthly life is one version of reality — not reality in its entirety, but a part of it. It is in itself an avenue through which you perceive what reality is. In order to explore that experience, you direct your attention to it and use all of your other (nonphysical) abilities as corollaries, adjuncts, additions. You hypnotize your very nerves, and the cells within your body, for they will react as you expect them to react, and the beliefs of your conscious mind are followed in degree by all portions of the self down to the smallest atom and molecule. The large events of your life, your interactions with others, including the habitual workings of the most minute physical events within your body — all of this follows your conscious belief.

For five or ten minutes a day at the most, then, use natural hypnosis as a method of accepting desired new beliefs. During that period concentrate your attention as vividly as possible upon one simple statement. Repeat it over and over while focusing upon it for this time. Try to feel the statement in whatever way is possible — that is, do not allow distractions, but if your mind insists upon running about then channel its images in line with your declaration.