“Seth material” search engine (Jane Roberts)

[...] In larger terms, such focusing in particular areas can involve an entire life situation, reincarnationally speaking, where you choose ahead of time, so to speak, to concentrate your attention in certain areas rather than others; you may pick for yourself a body that does not perform normally, or a mind that is not up to par in usual terms.

[...] If you have decided upon a situation in which a critical organic lack or disability is involved, and are born with a severe disease, for example, then that is the context in which you will experience this particular focus in corporeal reality. [...]

“Usual memory is as much a sifting process as it is anything else, in which experience’s intensity varies — sometimes ‘alive’ neurologically and sometimes not — just to focus our consciousness in one probable action or series. [...]

[...] Past motion and acts still go on, not recurring — it’s hard to explain — but those past actions are still exploring other probabilities, while our nervous structure focuses us in the one (physical) probable reality we’ve chosen. [...]

“These ‘past’ probabilities are not fleshed out in our terms, but they’re brilliantly focused in their own life. [...]

(Here in the last paragraph, then, is a pertinent clue, and one that Jane arrived at without asking Seth: She’s experienced such translation challenges often since beginning “Unknown” Reality — hence her talk before many of these sessions [from the 679th on] about attaining that “certain clear focus,” or “the one clearest place in consciousness,” before she began speaking for Seth.

This would not lead to a blurring of consciousness or focus. Instead the greater flexibility would result in a perfection of conscious focus. [...]

As a result of more frequent, briefer sleep periods, there would also be higher peaks of conscious focus, and a more steady renewal of both physical and psychic activity. [...]

Now, many diseases are simply caused by this division of yours and this long period of bodily inactivity, and this extended focus of attention in either waking or dreaming reality. [...]

[...] The inner dreaming portions of the personality seem strange to you not only because of a basic difference of focus, but because you clearly devote opposite portions of a twenty-four hour cycle to these areas of the self.

[...] The ego is in this context the portion of the self which is utterly focused upon, and imprisoned by, the moment point.

[...] It should be easy to see then why the focus of the ego is so sharp and brilliant. [...]

[...] Therefore, since only the ego is momentarily imprisoned within the focus of your plane, it is only the ego who probes so slowly into simultaneous action, perceiving it bit by bit and sip by sip. [...]

The whole self not only perceives these limitless moment points, but being a part of action, each whole self projects fragments and personalities from itself to all these points, creating therefore other egos, other intense focus points which are independent, which work out their own destinies and experiences, which in turn perceive any given moment point in slow motion.

[...] (Long pause at 9:39.) The three-dimensional selves, in existing within these realities, must focus their attention there completely. [...]

[...] Your environment is not simply the world about you as you know it, but also consists of past-life environments upon which you are not now focusing. [...]

You will simply be learning to focus in a new dimension of awareness, taking quick snapshots, as it were, in a strange environment. [...]

[...] Ruburt could not receive the information from me, it could not be translated nor interpreted while she was focused intensely in the physical environment. [...]

A personality in the primary gestalt is indeed focused upon your present plane of reality, but to suppose that the whole primary gestalt is so focused represents mankind’s ego playing with one of its most preposterous proposals.

[...] But again, there are infinite realities, as vivid, and some indescribably more vivid than your own, but presently you are not focused upon them.

[...] You have a focus in many more worlds than you know. [...]

[...] The individual, like the species, exists in multidimensional terms; and hovers around focuses of probabilities, weaving in and out of alternate realities constantly.

(“A photograph of a given person represents one experienced probable identity, focused in a recognized time sequence. [...]

(“In the same way, a ‘picture’ of the species represents only one version of the species, ‘snapped’ in a particular time sequence, valid because of the invisible realities not focused upon, but upon which reality rides.”

[...] The picture can be from the past or the present, but try to see it as a snapshot of a self poised in perfect focus, emerging from an underneath dimension in which other probable pictures could have been taken. [...]

Your attentions are indeed focused elsewhere. [...] Consciousness is the focus, the direction of focus. [...]

[...] His focus of attention is rather severely limited in some aspects, and yet in other ways it is very strongly focused.

[...] You have merely turned the focus of your attention into different realities. My attention, and my reality, is mainly focused in another direction.

Therefore it is also highly difficult for me to prove my own existence to you, for you are not focused within my field of attention. You are focused within the physical universe. [...]

[...] At the other end of the scale, before death the same applies, where some individuals remove their focus from physical life, leaving the body consciousness alone. [...] In the early days of infancy, there is not a steady focus of the personality in the body in any case.

In the beginning, the womb state under these conditions is a dreamlike one, with the personality still focused mainly in the between-life existence. [...]

[...] Gradually the identification with the between-life situation dwindles until nearly full focus resides in the physical body.

[...] Generally speaking, there is an optimum point of focus in physical reality, a period of intensification that has nothing to do with duration. [...]

[...] A shifting of focus is quite simply the main requirement for perceiving these other coordinates. But to shift focus to them presupposes a knowledge of their reality. [...]

[...] There is general and mass focus of all self-structures within that system, binding enough and cohesive enough so that the appearance of a permanent and all-pervading physical reality is maintained. [...]

[...] There is some overlapping, but the main focus within any system is entirely unique. [...]

[...] Each exists to some extent where the other is, and yet the camouflage structures make it necessary for those within any given system to recognize the certain characteristics, only, of the one in which focus is to be maintained.

At physical death, in your terms, the personality structure is able to approach certain coordinates, to perceive them, and to change focus from one system to another. [...]

The personality does indeed turn its focus into another field of reality, and does desert the camouflage image that it maintained. [...]

Consciously, you are able to focus within, understand, and gain development in, one field of reality at a time. [...]

[...] Earth’s time reference, however, brought to experience a new brilliant focus—and in the press of time, again, certain activities would be relatively more necessary than others, relatively more pleasant or unpleasant than others. [...]

He has free will to make any decisions that he is able to make (intently). This means that his free will is contained, given meaning, focused, and framed by his neurological structure. [...]

[...] The entire gestalt of probable actions, therefore, is already focused to some degree in the species’ differentiations. [...]

You focus your awareness in altered form into another universe, that is in every way as valid and permanent as your own. [...] A small amount of energy only is focused upon the physical field during sleep, enough simply to maintain the physical body within its physical environment.

[...] For now, again, the focus of attention and energy is in the physical universe. Reality then is a result of the focus of energy and attention.

[...] You may say that in sleeping you focus your energies to form a different reality than the reality of waking physical matter.

[...] This tendency actually involves a lack of focus, or a lack in the direction of focus. Our young friend shifts the focus of his awareness from inner to outer realities very often, and without realizing that he does so.

[...] Training will allow a strong disciplined focus within either reality.

[...] I can at times impress your physical reality, but the focus of my existence no longer involves a three-dimensional psychological structure. [...]

[...] As you focus upon certain details from a larger field of physical reality, so then you focus upon only the small portion of yourself that you consider “real.”

[...] A completely different kind of focus was presented, in which the ancestors were understood to contribute to the “new” experience of the living; one in which the physically focused consciousness clearly saw itself as perceiving the world for itself, but also for all of those who had gone before — (gradually louder for emphasis:) while realizing that in those terms he or she would contribute as well as the generations past.

These different lines of focus will each show you other aspects of your own reality, as individuals and as a species.

[...] If you think of it as simply a focus taken by “your” greater identity, then you will be able to follow what I am saying without feeling puny by contrast, or lost.⁶ The focus that you have is indeed inviolate.

[...] “I feel him — Seth — around now,” she said, “but it’s like last time: I’m getting stuff, but I’m waiting until it’s clear … I don’t really feel looped, but the center of focus I always use in the sessions seems strange. [...]

[...] With your focus, it seems that you have a line of identity from birth to death. [...]

[...] What you think of as daily life is then a focus upon certain probable events above others, a choosing of significances, a selection of pattern. [...]

[...] (With gestures, and forcefully.) This is the result of the focusing and yet limiting behavior of the physical brain, for effective survival behavior in your reality depends upon time reactions. The nerve patterns’ activity therefore causes the illusion of a present, in which your consciousness appears focused and alert.

[...] There is a definite filtering and focusing effect at work, then. [...]

[...] There is creativity in your past waiting for you even as there is in your future, but to utilize such experiences you must learn to alter your beliefs, and to some degree escape from the particular kind of limited conscious focus that you habitually use.

[...] Any appearance of enclosure is the result of camouflage distortions, quite necessary within a given system so that the organisms within it can focus their main attentions to the problems within a particular system.

[...] Their attention is completely focused within the imaginary room, with the result that all their concepts are based upon that belief.

[...] The inner senses, when the physical body is relaxed, will carry you through the imaginary boundaries, but a conscious focus upon the boundaries to be passed through will tend to reinforce them. [...]

Too great a conscious focus upon these purposes gives a negative reaction of doubt and anxiety. [...]

[...] It is here and then it is not here, but the physical self focuses upon only those moments of physical reality. Because consciousness fluctuates however, other portions of your self have memory of those times when it is not focused in “physical reality,” and this is also a portion of your entire existence.

[...] So a certain portion of you remembers those nonmoments when you are not focused in physical reality, when your existence is in another dimension of actuality entirely and you are perceiving what I will call, in your term of reference, nonintervals. [...]

That is correct — except that in the life in which you are now involved, you are not focusing upon the full potential of your vitality.

The experience involved in learning to change your own focus of awareness will be most beneficial. [...] Every individual has had his daydreams, and here you can see more clearly this change of focus. [...]

He has managed to organize physical reality because he focuses so intensely within it. [...]

[...] One of the main differences between the waking and sleeping states is merely the almost complete change of focus that is involved. [...]