“Seth material” search engine (Jane Roberts)

Any normal home life is denied him; and along with the overall concentration upon the problem at hand, all other stimuli is purposely held to a minimum. In their ways, the warden and guards subscribe to the same set of beliefs as that held by their prisoners — the idea of force and power is accentuated on both sides, and each believes the other its enemy.

The detective and his criminal wear versions of the same mask. Following such ideas, you end up with segregations in which the ill, being powerless, are isolated; the criminals are kept together; and the old are held in institutions or in cultural ghettos with their own kind. Transferences of personal problems are all involved here, and clusters of beliefs.

In all cases, little effort is made to understand the basic problems beneath, and the social segregations merely build up the pressure, so to speak, so that those with like beliefs are kept in situations that only perpetuate the basic causes.

Unknowingly, the sick often give up their power to act in a healthy manner to the physicians. The doctors accept this mandate since they share the same framework of belief, so the medical profession obviously needs patients as badly as the ill need the hospitals. Society as you know it, not understanding the nature of normal aggression, considers it violent. The prisons and law enforcement agencies need criminals in the same way that criminals need them, for they operate within the same system of belief. Each accepts violence as a method of behavior and survival. (Pause.) If you do not understand that you create your own reality, then you may assign all good results to a personified god, and need the existence of a devil to explain the undesirable reality. So churches as they now exist in Western society need a devil as well as a god.

There are many subsidiary beliefs connected to these convictions. They can all work in such a way that you deny yourself the use of your abilities — and this in turn causes you to project them outward upon others.

If you accept the idea that knowledge is “bad,” for instance, then in line with that belief all of your efforts to learn will be futile, or bring you great discomfort. You will not trust any knowledge that comes easily for you will feel that you have to pay, do penance for the attainment of any wisdom. Fundamental interpretations of the Bible often lead to such conclusions, so that the pursuit of knowledge itself, which has a built-in biological impetus, becomes a taboo activity.

(10:46.) Your beliefs then are highly important in the way in which you handle the power of personal action.

The use of your private energy brings you into intimate relationship with your own source of power. Healing involves great natural aggressive thrusts of energy, growth, and the focus of vitality. The more powerless you feel, the less able you are to utilize your own healing abilities. You are then forced to project these outward upon a physician, a healer, or any outside agency. If your own belief in the physician “works” and you are cured of symptoms, you are physically relieved, and yet your own belief in yourself may be further infringed upon. If you are making no effective efforts to handle your own problems, then the symptoms will simply reappear in a new fashion, and the same process will be reinitiated. You may lose faith in your doctor while still retaining confidence in doctors as a whole, and run from one to another.

The individual’s faith is transferred more and more to an outside agency. This usually means that no time is allowed for necessary inner dialogues of self questioning, and the self-healing that might otherwise occur is brought about through belief in another. This can only go on for so long, however.

(11:35.) Your social structure, from the largest metropolis to the smallest farm, from the wealthiest areas to the poorest ghettos, from the monasteries to the prisons, reflects the inner situation of the individual self and the personal beliefs that each of you hold.

If you utilize the point of power properly (as described in the 657th session in Chapter Fifteen), you will feel the nonphysical energy translated into effective personal power through your intersection with flesh. You will be able to use that power consciously, with purpose, to change your personal experience, and so to change the social framework at least partially. Such exercises aid in the evolution of your consciousness, and will also serve you in fashions you may not suspect. The acquiescence to your own power will automatically flow through your experience, activating your dream life as well and providing additional helpful impetus to your waking reality. You will no longer need to transfer your sense of power to others. All of the exercises given earlier in this book are prerequisites, however; they are necessary so that you understand how the point of power is to be used. The recognition of personal feelings and the working through of beliefs — all of this will expand your understanding of yourself.

You cannot use the point of power to gain control over another, for your own beliefs will automatically trap you. In any case you must be aware of your own power and believe that you are worthy of it. Many of the previous chapters in this book have been written precisely to convince you of your own worth. You have been told to experience your feelings and not to deny them, so you are not to use the point of power as an attempt to refute the reality of your emotions at any given time.

(She told me that Seth would soon be going into the effects of our beliefs upon our environment, explaining how our racial mental climate is responsible for our exteriorized “weather.” He plans to use local aspects of the great flood of June, 1972, as the focal point for his material because we’d had personal experience with that disaster here in Elmira. [See the notes for the 613th session in Chapter One.] Seth, Jane added, would say that as a species we’ve grown used to thinking of ourselves as being outside of nature — so much so that we’ve forgotten we’re really part of it.)