“Seth material” search engine (Jane Roberts)

Often the seeming meaninglessness of dreams is the result of your own ignorance of dream symbolism and organization. For example: You may also misinterpret “revelatory” material because you try to structure it in reference to your ordinary conscious organizations. Many valuable and quite practical insights that could be utilized go astray, therefore. I am going to suggest, then, some simple exercises that will allow you to directly experience the “feel of your being” in a different way.

There are several approaches to these exercises. The idea will be to experience emotions and events as much as possible outside of time sequences.

Now for another exercise. Imagine a very large painting, in which the most important events of your life are clearly depicted. First of all, see them as a series of scenes, arranged in small squares, to be viewed as you would, say, a comic-book page. The events must be of significance to you. If school graduation meant nothing, for example, do not paint it in. Have the pictures begin at the upper left-hand corner, ending finally at the lower right-hand corner. Then completely switch the sequence, so that the earliest events are at the lower right-hand corner.

When you have done this, ask yourself which scene evokes the strongest emotional response. Tell yourself that it will become larger and larger, then mentally watch its size change. Certain dynamics are involved here, so that such a scene will also attract elements from other scenes. Allow those other scenes to break up, then. The main picture will attract elements from all of the others, until you end up with an entirely different picture — one made up of many of the smaller scenes, but united in an entirely new fashion. You must do this exercise, however, for simply reading about it will not give you the experience that comes from the actual exercise. Do it many times.

Some of you will meet with some resistance in these exercises. You will enjoy reading about them, but you will find all kinds of excuses that prevent you from trying them yourself. If you are honest, many of you will sense a reluctance, for certain qualities of consciousness are brought into play that run counter to your usual conscious experience.

You might feel as if you are crossing your wires, so to speak, or stretching vaguely sensed psychic muscles. The purpose is not so much the perfect execution of such exercises as it is to involve you in a different mode of experience and of awareness that comes into being as you perform in the ways suggested. You have been taught not to mix, say, waking and dreaming conditions, not to daydream. You have been taught to focus all of your attention clearly, ambitiously, energetically in a particular way — so daydreaming, or mixing and matching modes of consciousness, appears passive in a derogatory fashion, or nonactive, or idle. (Louder:) “The devil finds work for idle hands” — an old Christian dictum.

(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.

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.

Suggest that instead of falling asleep, you will come into another kind of wakefulness. Try to imagine that you are awake when you sleep. On other occasions when you go to bed, lie down and settle yourself, but as you fall asleep imagine that you are awakening the next morning. I will not tell you what to look for. The doing of these exercises is important — not the results in usual terms.

I said that there were different kinds of knowledge; so will these exercises bring you in contact with knowledge in another way. Done over a period of time, they will open up alternate modes of perception, so that you can view your experience from more than one standpoint. This means that your experience will itself change in quality. Sometimes when you are awake, and it is convenient, imagine that your present experience of the moment is a dream, and is highly symbolic. Then try to interpret it as such.

The qualities of consciousness cannot be elucidated. These exercises will bring you in contact with other kinds of knowing, and acquaint you with different feelings of consciousness that are not familiar. Your consciousness itself will then have a different feel as the exercises are done. Certain questions that you may have asked may be answered in such a state, but not in ways that you can anticipate, nor can you necessarily translate the answers into known terms. The different modes of consciousness with which I hope to acquaint you are not alien, however. They are quite native, again, in dream states, and are always present as alternatives beneath usual awareness.

(10:58.) Sometime as you walk down a street, pretend that you are seeing the same scene from the sky in an airplane, yourself included. On another occasion, as you sit inside your house imagine that you are outside on the lawn or street. All of these exercises should be followed by a return to the present: You focus your attention outward in the present moment as clearly as possible, letting the sounds and sights of the physical situation come into your attention.

The other exercises, in fact, will result in a clearer picture of the world, for they will facilitate the very motion of your perceptions, allowing you to perceive nuances in the physical situation that before would have escaped your notice. We will be dealing with practical direct experience. It will do you no good if you are simply intellectually aware of what I say, but practically ignorant. Period. Therefore the exercises will be important because they will offer you evidence of your own greater perceptive abilities.

Only if you understand your own freedom in such areas will you allow yourselves to explore alternate states of consciousness, or the environment of dreams. Such exercises are not to be used to supersede the world you know, but to supplement it, to complete it, and to allow you to perceive its true dimensions.