“Seth material” search engine (Jane Roberts)

You can learn much about your own body consciousness, and therefore to some extent about the natural man, by observing the behavior of your pets or other animals, and you can to some extent learn from their behavior, and therefore to some extent counteract any susceptibility to negative beliefs. I have given some material like this in the past—but on such occasions try to return to the moment, to the present. Perceive it as clearly as you can from the standpoint of the stimuli present before you. Mentally say “This is my present experience now.” Then, if you find yourself exaggerating any unpleasantness within that moment, and projecting it into the future, you stop and say “That is not a part of this present moment. In the terms of my bodily reality, those dire imaginings, whatever they are, are not real. My body can only respond to the present. I will not overload that present by borrowing trouble that in this moment has no reality” (all very emphatically). Such imaginings frighten the body consciousness, as you might frighten an animal.

Every animal wants to know what is going on in the area of its perception. That is a normal reaction. People are the same way. That is why they chase fire trucks, so to speak—not necessarily because they are looking for tragedies, but because of life’s great curiosity, and also because life enjoys variety and the unusual. It is quite natural then, for example, to want to watch the news on television, and in the same way and for the same reason.

In news watching—which does satisfy a natural need—you also run into a barrage of cultural beliefs and attitudes that are secondary. They are secondary in that they are interpretations placed upon events. The events come first. The body consciousness, watching the news, would think—if it thought as you do—“What activity, what commotion, what excitement (almost laughing), what a conglomeration of smells and sights, what a congregation of my fellows, running and chasing, rising and falling, even living and dying. What a sensual barrage of activity—and how juicy it all is, since, relatively speaking (underlined), I sit here in my cozy cave, gnawing my supper bone, peacefully, with a rug at my feet. My belly full and my bed nearby.” (All with gusto and emphasis.)

Remember the natural man. Remember his animal characteristics. Ask him what is wrong when you are bothered with symptoms, and he will most certainly tell you that you are frightening him by dire imaginings that do not exist in his world.

(“Man’s own subjective reality, in all of its manifestations [pause] is the only one real “tool” that will give him any indication of his own greater existence, and therefore of his own origins and that of the universe. The patterns for all of man’s work appear first in the mind, and the fragments of man’s individual and joint dreams fall together faultlessly to form the mosaic of individual and mass events.”

(“I guess that’s it,” Jane laughed as she paused. “I don’t know what it was. I guess it’s Seth—one of those in-between things....”