1 result for (book:notp AND session:764 AND stemmed:belief)
[... 10 paragraphs ...]
What did you wear to work three days ago? What did you have for breakfast a week ago? Who sat next to you in kindergarten? What frightened you last? Are you afraid of sleep? Did your parents beat you? What did you do just after lunch yesterday? What color shoes did you wear three days ago? You remember only significant events or details. Your emotions trigger your memories, and they organize your associations. Your emotions are generated through your beliefs. They attach themselves so that certain beliefs and emotions seem almost synonymous.
[... 6 paragraphs ...]
Unfortunately, certain aspects of Christianity were stressed over others, and that dictum was based upon the belief in a wicked self that needed to be disciplined and diverted into constructive activity. The belief in such an unsavory self stops many people from any exploration of the inner self — and, therefore, from any direct experience that will give them counter-evidence. If you are afraid of yourself, if you are afraid of your own memories, you will block your associative processes, fearing for example that they will bring to light matters best forgotten — and usually sexual matters.
(10:08.) Sexuality is the only strong area of energy with which some people are connected, so it becomes the focal point for all of their beliefs about the self in general. In doing some of these exercises, you might come across images of masturbation, homosexual or lesbian encounters, or simply old sexual fantasies, and immediately backtrack because your beliefs may tell you that these are evil.
You will not remember, or want to remember, your own dreams for the same reason. Many people, therefore, tell themselves that they are very impatient to discover the nature and extent of the psyche, and cannot understand why they meet with so little success. At the same time, such beliefs convince them that the self is evil. These beliefs must be weeded out. If you cannot honestly encounter the dimensions of your creaturehood, you surely cannot explore the greater dimensions of the psyche. This blocking of associations, however, is a very important element that impedes many people. The psyche’s organizations are broader, and in their way more rational than most of your conscious beliefs about the self.
[... 3 paragraphs ...]
I will suggest many exercises throughout this book. Some of them will necessitate variations of normal consciousness. I may ask you to forget physical stimuli, or suggest that you amplify them, but I am nowhere stating that your mode of consciousness is wrong. It is limited, not by nature, but by your own beliefs and practice. You have not carried it far enough.
[... 11 paragraphs ...]
Now, in the normal course of events you attract experience in the same fashion. You anticipate events. You are aware of them before they happen, whether or not you ever succeed in conscious predictions. You form your life, however, through the intimate interworkings of your own conscious goals and beliefs.
[... 10 paragraphs ...]