“Seth material” search engine (Jane Roberts)

You cannot escape your own attitudes, for they will form the nature of what you see. Quite literally, you see what you want to see, and you see your own thoughts, your own emotional attitudes, materialized in physical form. If changes are to occur, they must be physical and psychic changes. These will be reflected in your physical environment. Negative, distrustful, fearful, or degrading attitudes toward anyone work against the self and against the individuals involved. Now if you would change an individual, change your thoughts toward him, and changes will appear in the sense data world.

Now: You are not listening to what your own inner voice says. You are listening to what your ego says, and this I speaks through your mouth and then you hear this I’s words. But these are not the words of the whole self. These are merely the words of the one part of the self with which you are most acquainted.

You are not speaking of basic issues. You are flying paper dragons to be punctured, but these are not the real dragons. You must learn to listen to the voice of your inner self, for if you know the use you are to this man, you do not recognize the nature of his use to you.

You have built defenses so strongly that you have not heard the voice of the inner self. The inner self is hardly to be feared. You have allowed the ego to become a counterfeit self, and you take its word because you will not hear the muffled voice that is within you speak.

You have been examining others, rather than examining the self. What you see of others is the materialization of what you think, subconsciously, that you are: not necessarily what you are. For example: if others seem deceitful to you it is because you deceive yourself and then project this outward onto others.

This is, of course, on a subconscious basis. Another example only: a very industrious individual thinks the majority of mankind are lazy and good for nothing. No one would ever think of calling him lazy or good for nothing, yet this may be precisely his own subconscious picture of himself, against which he drives himself incessantly, all in an effort to prove that his erroneous self-image is, indeed, wrong. And all without realizing his basic concept of himself and without recognizing the fact that he projects it outward onto others.

True self-knowledge is indispensable for health or vitality, and this means in every instance. The recognition of the truth about the self means that you must first discover what you think about yourself subconsciously. If this is a good image, build upon it. If it is a poor one, recognize it as simply the opinion of the subconscious and not as a definite truth.