“Seth material” search engine (Jane Roberts)

(Yesterday Jane began writing a rather long poem, in Sumari, that she calls The Song of the Silver Brothers. She started it in a “normal” state of consciousness and ended up in an altered one — “immersed in a high state of inner concentration,” she said. As the work progressed she found herself actually writing two poems together, for after each verse of Sumari she did its English counterpart. Usually she doesn’t attempt to translate a work in Sumari until some time later. Days, weeks, even months can pass before this comes about.

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.

(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.

First of all, the unconscious is not a sponge, indiscriminately accepting material regardless of the considerations of your conscious self. All beliefs or suggestions are first sifted through your conscious mind, and only those that you accept are then permitted their penetration into the other areas of the self.

No negative beliefs were thrust upon you, therefore, despite your will. Period. None can be inflicted upon you that you do not consciously accept. In formal hypnosis, the hypnotist and the subject play a game. If the hypnotist orders the subject to forget what happened, that individual will pretend to do so. In that context both hold the belief in the resulting forgetfulness, and it is the power of belief that is being demonstrated. But instead this is taken as an indication that the conscious mind is helpless under such conditions, generally speaking, and this is not the case.

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.

(Pause.) Formal hypnosis merely brings about an accelerated version of what goes on all the time. It is a perfect example of the instantaneous results possible ideally — but not usually seen practically — as present beliefs negate past ones.

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.

Some of you are simply mentally lazy. You do not consciously examine the data that you receive. Many who make a practice of “denying” negative suggestions from others, asserting positive affirmations instead, actually do so because they are so fully convinced that the power of negative beliefs is stronger than that of beneficial ones.

Each of you will find habitual thought patterns in your own life backed up by resulting action — conditioned behavior as it were — by which you continually reinforce negative aspects, concentrate upon them to the exclusion of conflicting data, and so bring them into experience through natural hypnosis.