Mike's commentary · The Nature of Personal Reality, Chapter 11

The "Introduction" and "Chapter Highlights" in this chapter were summarized by an AI editor based on the main text below; they are not words spoken by Mike during his lectures. The main text comes from Mike's commentary, and the blockquotes are Seth's original words (the portions Mike read aloud).

Introduction

This chapter centers on "the conscious mind as the carrier of beliefs," explaining that beliefs determine emotions, and emotions are set in motion by beliefs and in turn affect the body and experience. To understand emotions, one must first examine the beliefs in the conscious mind; negative emotions and aggressiveness are natural forces of healing and creativity, and suppressing them distorts them into violence or illness. By experiencing emotions as they are, listing and checking beliefs, and finding bridge beliefs that connect contradictory beliefs, one can restore the natural flow of body and mind. The case of Andrea shows that changing beliefs changes outer circumstances.

Key Points of This Chapter

• Beliefs set emotions in motion; without understanding beliefs, you cannot truly understand emotions.
• Negative emotions and aggression are natural forces of healing and creativity; suppressing them distorts them into violence or illness.
• Experiencing emotions as they are and tracing back along them can lead you to the beliefs behind them.
• Contradictory core beliefs can be unified through bridge beliefs, restoring consistency between mind and body.
• Changing beliefs changes bodily responses and outer circumstances; Angela's case illustrates this point.

Main Text

The Relationship Between Beliefs and Emotions

Let's look at the content of Chapter Eleven. Seth says, let's proceed to the next chapter, and the title is "The Conscious Mind as the Carrier of Beliefs."

The nature of your personal beliefs has a great deal to do with what kind of emotions you have at any given time.

Beliefs have a great deal to do with what kind of emotions you have. The reason you feel aggressive, happy, despairing, or determined — these are all your emotions. These emotions follow from those things that happen to you — these things happen to you, and you believe they have something to do with you, they are related to you — and from who or what you think caused them, what you yourself believe certain people or certain things caused.

Unless you know your own beliefs, you will not understand your own emotions.

You have to understand beliefs first before you can understand emotions. And if you seem to feel aggressive or unhappy for no reason at all — if you have not learned to listen to the beliefs within your own conscious mind, your emotions will also seem to erupt without cause, without any sense. If you yourself do not observe these beliefs within you, your emotions will seem to erupt for no reason at all.

Because beliefs set their own emotions in motion — this is a key sentence.

For example, depression is the most common emotion. What is its greatest cause? Whether facing external circumstances heaped upon you, or facing overwhelming intense emotions coming from within — whether external circumstances or internal emotions — you believe that the conscious mind is powerless. Because your guilt, that kind of depression, is all caused by your inner sense of powerlessness, a sense of powerlessness and worthlessness — feeling that you have no way to solve problems.

Psychology, religion, science — all of these, by stripping the conscious mind of its commanding ability, these disciplines will strip away part or even all of your conscious mind's abilities, and they treat the conscious mind as their own stepchild, they do not treat the conscious mind as their own biological son. Your conscious mind is what emerges from your own inner self, it is a part of you, but we just do not treat it as our own biological son, as if it were a child that came free with a phone plan, not taking it seriously — neither believing in it, nor valuing it, nor caring about it. All of these will add to your confusion.

The positive-thinking school tries to remedy this situation, but it brings more harm than good.

So-called positive thinking is that kind of chicken-soup-for-the-soul approach. It knows you have these confusions, this bewilderment, this lack of motivation and so on, and it tells you to cheer up and pull yourself together. This kind of positive thinking often brings more harm than good, because it attempts to impose a belief upon you — a belief that it wishes you had, but which you do not have in your current predicament. It wants you to have it, but you do not have it, so it tries to force it upon you, saying: "You must have positive beliefs, you must face life with a positive and optimistic attitude." Many of these philosophies make you afraid to think about negative thoughts and emotions, feeling that these are all bad, that only those positive thoughts, that kind of great, glorious, and correct thinking — meaning great, bright, and righteous — can be brought into the light. Those negative thoughts and emotions, you feel embarrassed to look at them, or embarrassed to admit that you have them.

In all of these cases, the clues to your emotional experience and your behavior lie within your belief system. Your emotional experience and the clues to your behavior are all within your belief system. Some of them are more obvious than others, but you can all consciously obtain these clues. The emotional clues and the behavioral clues can all be found within your belief system; some are clear, some are unclear, some are hidden rather deep, but as long as you look for them, they can all be found.

Several Reactions to Inferiority and Guilt

If you believe you have no good qualities and are filled with inferiority and guilt, then you may accept the psychological background of these beliefs according to this personal background, and react in several different ways.

You believe you have no good qualities—many people say this, "I have no good qualities, I'm just an ordinary person," and are also filled with inferiority and guilt. Then you will accept such beliefs and their psychological background according to this kind of personal background. You accept, "I'm just an ordinary person, I have no good qualities." Then you will react in several different ways to such a psychological background and presupposition.

For example, you may be very afraid of aggressive emotions. We are afraid of aggressive emotions because others seem so strong that you dare not even entertain thoughts of retaliation. When we encounter people on the street who bully you, or when there are all kinds of bullying situations, very often you do not dare to fight back, because you feel you are too weak and the other party is too strong. You do not even dare to have thoughts of retaliation, let alone actually retaliate. So your aggressive actions amount to nothing at all.

Or, if you believe that all such thoughts are wrong—you think aggressive thoughts are all wrong, if someone hits you, you cannot hit them back, if someone scolds you, you cannot scold them back—such a viewpoint holds that aggression is always wrong, so you will suppress them, push them down, and thereby further increase your guilt. "How could I have such thoughts? How could I have thoughts of striking out? Or want to do rude things? How could I use such rude language to curse back at the other person?" This will increase his guilt. That will stir up even more aggression within you, because with this kind of guilt, you have suppressed your normal aggression, and it will stir up even more aggression within you, further deepening your sense of personal worthlessness. You have aggression, and the aggression grows stronger and stronger, but you dare less and less to act; the less you dare to act, the stronger your aggression becomes, and the stronger it becomes, the less you dare to act. In this way you will feel even more useless, and this sense of worthlessness becomes even more pronounced.

In this state, if you find a book that teaches you to contemplate the good and to immediately turn your thoughts toward love and light, then you are asking for trouble.

If in the state described above, you find a book that teaches you to carefully contemplate the good—to do good deeds, to be kind to others—and to immediately turn your thoughts toward a state filled with love and light, then you are asking for trouble. Because this approach will only make you more afraid of your own natural emotions. You will think, "How could I have such thoughts? I should be like a great person, my heart should be filled with love and light, how could I think of attacking the other person? My personal character is simply too terrible." So he will become more afraid of himself. Afraid of what? Afraid of his own emotions—how could I be such a person?

You will not understand any better than before why you have such emotions; you will only have hidden them a little better.

This kind of book or thought system that teaches you to be kind to others only makes you hide these aggressive emotions. It will not tell you why, it will not let you understand why this is so, why you have such emotions. It does not care. It says these emotions are all bad, suppress them, hide them, do not release them. And if you are not prepared, in this situation, you may very well become ill.

In this situation, the more you want to be a good person, the more inferior you will feel in your heart, because you are not that good. When someone slaps you on the left cheek, you do not want to turn the right cheek; you want to slap his right cheek. When someone scolds you, you do not simply let it pass; you have taken it all in, and you have stirred up strong emotions. Yet you tell yourself, "I cannot scold him back. As long as I do not scold him back and do not accept his scolding, the scolding will return to himself." You are comforting yourself, but in fact you have accepted it. You know clearly in your own heart that you have accepted it, because your emotions have already risen. So the more you want to be a good person, the more inferior you will feel in your heart, because you feel you are still not good enough.

Knowing Your Own Beliefs

You can ask yourself these questions: What do you think of yourself, your daily life, your body, and your relationships with others?

We can do this as an exercise. Ask yourself: How do you see yourself? How do you see your ordinary life? What do you think of your body, and your relationships with others? Are they good or not good? Do you feel good or not good about yourself, where is it good, where is it not good; how is your daily life, your body, your interpersonal relationships.

By writing these answers down, or recording them on a recorder. I suggest recording them on a recorder, because writing them down is too troublesome. Nowadays phones have a recording function, so just take out your phone and record it, just talk to yourself and say your views about yourself. However you do it, in any case you will objectify them in some way, objectify all these beliefs.

When you feel an unpleasant emotion, take a little time to find out their source.

In real life, when we have unpleasant emotions, we need to find out their source. The answer will be much easier than you originally thought, and you will know the answer very quickly.

For the time being, accept this emotion as your own.

You must first accept this emotion as your own, that is, as your own emotion. Do not sweep it into a corner where you cannot see it and ignore it. Do not fail to see it and say "this is not my emotion," or temporarily suppress it, none of that works, or try to replace it with thoughts you consider good. First observe the true face of your emotion -- before you replace this emotion, before you hide it away, you must first know where the source of this emotion is, you must see where the root of this emotion lies, so you must find its true face.

After a time, when you become more aware of your own beliefs, you will see how they automatically bring about certain emotions.

After a period of time, once you find that you understand your own beliefs more clearly, you will see how they bring about certain emotions. How your beliefs bring emotions out -- this "they" refers to beliefs.

A person who is sure of himself will not be provoked by the contempt and anger of others. If a person is very confident, other people's contempt for him is useless. This is very normal. For example, if you are an expert in some field, and some amateurs raise doubts about you, you will not get angry at all, because you feel they are too far below you, they simply do not understand, and you will not hold a grudge against them. But a person who has no confidence in his own value, if at this time you question him, or show contempt for him, he will be directly provoked. In the above situation, you will fly into a rage.

Your emotions flow freely, and if they are not impeded, they will always lead you back to the conscious belief that caused your emotion.

That is, if you do not obstruct this emotion, if you let it flow naturally, it will naturally lead you back to the root of the belief from which that emotion originally arose.

Your emotions always change the chemical balance of the body and the hormones within it.

Emotion is not just a problem caused by belief; it will change your chemical balance and the amount of hormones in your body. But there is danger only when you refuse to face the conscious mind.

It is greatly to your benefit to understand your own intentions and to face the true face of your own experience.

Because this will generate some powerful emotions in you -- the motivation to keep exploring, to go explore the source of your own emotions yourself. This is very helpful to you. No one can do this for you.

Misunderstandings About "Mental Health"

Perhaps you believe that mental health means being happy all the time, determined and considerate of others, never crying or showing disappointment. This belief alone can cause you to deny a very natural level of human experience, and block the flow of emotion that can cleanse both your body and mind.

This is something you have to do yourself -- what is it? It is to find the source of your emotions. He says, if you believe that mental health has certain indicators, namely that you must always be happy, determined, unwavering in confidence, and considerate of others, never crying, never weak, never showing disappointment -- this single thought, this single belief, has already caused you to deny a very natural level of human experience, and blocked the flow of emotion that could have cleansed both your body and mind.

That is, your normal emotions, your normal emotions as a human being -- you cannot be like this every day. You cannot always be happy, you cannot be like a Maitreya Buddha; you cannot be unwavering in everything, determined in everything, considerate of others everywhere, never thinking of yourself, always taking joy in helping others, never crying, never having any moment of weakness or vulnerability, and never feeling disappointed in yourself or others. If you think that so-called mental health is like this, then you are wrong.

So-called mental health is simply your natural state: crying when you need to cry, laughing when you need to laugh, feeling sad when you need to feel sad, feeling jealous when you need to feel jealous. All those little thoughts and little emotions are normal, and they are all allowed. These emotions can precisely cleanse both your body and mind -- that is the flow of emotion. If you deny it, then you are denying the flow of emotion that can ordinarily cleanse your body and mind.

And what we, or you, need to do is not to hold on to a certain emotion or a certain thing and refuse to let go -- it is not about not having that emotion. Having that emotion is normal; if it comes, it comes, but do not cling to it and refuse to let go. Our usual mistake is clinging to it and refusing to let go, not that the emotion should not exist. This is one of our biggest misunderstandings.

But if you are convinced that emotions are dangerous, then this belief itself will cause you to fear all your emotions.

If we ordinarily think that being emotional is abnormal, we often say, "Oh, this person is so emotional," and this statement itself is slightly derogatory. We often say that women are more emotional than men, and actually when we say this, there is a kind of gender discrimination in it, a certain derogatory element. Because you are implying that being emotional is a bad thing -- not professional enough, not calm enough, not rational enough, not firm enough. You will have a whole series of views that speak ill of being emotional. You do not see how great the advantages of being emotional are. In other words, if there were no emotionality, what joy would there be left in your life? Your life would be utterly dull. Would you be willing to be friends with someone who is not emotional? Would you be willing to be with someone who, as described earlier, is unwavering and never cries, always optimistic, always happy, considerate of others everywhere, and every day acts like a living Lei Feng? Would you like such a person? Such a person has no fun at all.

And if you show any behavior that is not the most reasonably composed, you will become almost panic-stricken. You hope to have the state of mind where you remain unruffled even if Mount Tai collapses before you, but when you do not have it -- at this point Mount Tai has not even collapsed yet and you are already flustered -- what will you do? You will think, "How useless am I? My level is still not enough. Why can I not calm down? My composure is still not enough, my stability is still not enough." You will blame yourself even more, have even less confidence in yourself, and feel that you really are not good enough. This is normal, right? Be sure to remember, it is normal. Have you ever seen anyone who can truly remain unruffled when Mount Tai collapses before them?

You will then think that your emotions or feelings are very unpredictable and unreliable, and extremely powerful, so they must be suppressed at all costs.

Under the belief that "being emotional is bad," you think that emotions or feelings are unpredictable and unreliable. Because you do not know -- emotions are like the weather. It is like saying our emotions are like the weather, shifting between cloudy and sunny, and you never know when you will be in a good mood or a bad mood. Emotions are extremely powerful; when an emotion comes, the whole person completely surrenders to it. Its power is very great, and the same is true of feelings.

This attempt to stifle natural emotions will definitely produce side effects.

Be sure to remember here: it definitely will. When you stifle these natural emotions, side effects will definitely arise. If you want to blame something, blame the belief itself, not the emotion. Do not blame the emotion; blame your own belief.

Any of the situations described above will cause you to lose contact with your own inner balance.

Your sense of balance with your original self -- each of us has an inner balance -- this balance you will lose. Your inherent ease will be disturbed. You should originally be self-sufficient, with inner ease, but now it has been disturbed, and you are no longer at ease. Why? Because you are always blaming yourself, always feeling that this emotion should not come, that emotion should not exist, this is not good, that is not right. And you also blame yourself for being useless: "Why am I like this? Why do I always love to cry? When I encounter difficulties, why am I always so hesitant? Why am I not firm enough?" And so on. If that is the case, you will definitely be in this state.

The Function of the Conscious Mind

All right, let us continue reading. There is no need to go over the middle process. Seth goes on to say:

The function of your conscious mind is to adjust your abilities and the conscious mind's beliefs about the nature of reality to the same direction.

This is what we said earlier: you need to align with the inner self, to stay consistent with it. Its main function is to adjust our abilities and the conscious mind's beliefs about the nature of reality to the same direction. This is the most important point.

And your abilities are quite considerable, because they include the deepest levels of your creativity, as well as the power that lies hidden beneath consciousness and of which you have only a faint sense.

Our abilities are very considerable. Our inner self is almost omnipotent, because it includes the deepest levels of your creativity, and also that power and energy hidden deep beneath your consciousness. The most important function of our conscious mind is calibration. Calibrate what? It is to calibrate our abilities and the conscious mind's beliefs about the nature of reality, to calibrate the two of them together. That is, to direct our abilities and our energy toward the things we want to bring about, to focus our energy on those things, to tune them so they are in harmony.

In this state, our conscious mind, that is, our conscious thinking, or our belief system, should do the most important thing. Do not say one thing and mean another. If I think something, I should do it. Do not be influenced by external things, do not hesitate, do not give yourself all kinds of reasons and excuses. If you want to do something, go bravely and do it. To put it in the simplest terms, use the phrase we used before in our meditation practice: you must align with your inner self, you must align with your inner self.

The standard for alignment is also very simple: when you feel inner satisfaction, joy, happiness, pleasure, that state of ecstasy, that state of self-forgetfulness, that state of being so immersed in something that you cannot pull yourself away, all such states are states of alignment. If it is not one of the feelings above, if you feel a little hesitant, a little awkward, a little flustered inside, your mood is not high, these are often times when you are not in alignment. Or when your mood is very low, that is also not alignment.

What do you do when you are not aligned? There are many methods. Three simple ones: first, go to sleep. If your mood is very low and you cannot adjust it for the moment, the simplest thing is to take a nap. Sleep may make it better, because it temporarily relieves this state of misalignment. The second method is to meditate. The way meditation works is that in the meditative state you maintain a frequency more consistent with the inner self, which makes it easier to tune in, because you shut off some of the stimulation from the outer senses. The third method is to change your beliefs, to use an opposite belief to replace the belief that is causing your current low mood. We have discussed this issue before, so I will not repeat it here. I am just summarizing it briefly. So this part is Seth's summary of this issue, and it actually means the same thing.

The Dilemma of Contradictory Beliefs

You cannot believe that you have no right to be happy, that you do not deserve happiness, while at the same time consciously forcing yourself to be happy.

Your beliefs cannot go in opposite directions. You cannot believe that you have no right to be happy -- there are many people who believe they have no right to be happy, yes, there are many. If you look carefully, maybe you are one of them. You will feel: "Oh, I haven't done enough yet. Once I have earned enough money, then I will be happy, then I will enjoy myself; once I have achieved fame and success, then I will be happy, then I will enjoy myself; once such and such happens, then I will do such and such." You keep delaying your happiness, keep postponing it. You feel that the you of right now does not yet deserve happiness, that you have not yet reached the standard you think you should reach before being happy. Many people are like this -- observe carefully in your life.

Yet at the same time you use your consciousness to force yourself to be happy. You read some inspirational article that says you should maintain an optimistic attitude: "I must be optimistic every day, I must be optimistic every day." But you want to be optimistic and yet you cannot manage it. Your essence feels: "How can I be happy when I have not yet reached that standard? Only after I complete a small goal will I be happy; before I complete it, I can only work hard." But you read that inspirational article saying we should maintain an optimistic and positive attitude in life, and you tell yourself you should still remain optimistic. When you have already denied yourself the right to happiness, how can you become optimistic? He gives this example because we often have this kind of opposing belief interfering with ourselves.

Another one is, you cannot tell yourself to release your aggressive thoughts while at the same time believing that their freedom is wrong.

On the one hand you say, I cannot suppress my emotions, I must release my aggressive thoughts, my normal aggressive thoughts, completely -- I cannot suppress them. But in your heart you also think: aggression is not good, aggressive behavior is also not good, aggressive thoughts are also not good. Deep in your heart you actually believe that the freedom of aggression is not good, that it is wrong. Yet you also want to say you should release it. You keep going back and forth, entangled in a dilemma.

You must know your own beliefs with complete clarity. In all situations, you yourself must be very clear in your own heart.

Again, if someone tells you that the psyche is good and perfect, and that you yourself must also be perfect in every way, but at the same time you believe your body is imperfect, then you will forever remain in contradiction.

This is very normal. We must accept the imperfections in life. Jane once said something -- Jane said that if in this three-dimensional world I were to speak one truth, one thing that could be confirmed as correct, as true and unerring, then that one sentence would be: in real life, there is far too much imperfection. That is Jane's own view.

What does this mean? It means we must acknowledge that imperfection in life is normal. Whether it is the world around us, or our inner thoughts, or our psyche, or our sentiments, or our character, and so on -- all of it is in a state of imperfection. We are constantly in a state of "becoming." We can be in a state of becoming perfect, but we must acknowledge that the present state is imperfect. If you acknowledge that the present state is perfect, then there is no need for a process of becoming -- if you are already perfect, what is there left to change? Nothing.

When you are constantly experiencing new things, challenging yourself, using your potential to create more miraculous things, you are actually in the process of moving from an imperfect state toward a perfect state. We should enjoy the feeling of this process, and also gladly appreciate our own imperfect state. But in your heart you have a firm conviction that you are in the process of becoming perfect -- when you believe you are in the process of moving from imperfection to perfection, what is there to be dissatisfied with yourself about? A prodigal son has already turned back; a person has already recognized his own imperfection and is developing toward perfection -- what is wrong with that?

Then why must you insist that these present imperfections do not exist? Why dare you not acknowledge these imperfections? If you dare not acknowledge these imperfections, then you are denying the existence of these realities. Then how can you ever become perfect? If you do not even acknowledge that these things are imperfect, how can you make yourself perfect? All of this sounds like a tongue twister.

To put it simply: love yourself, love the you of right now, love the people around you, love your present environment, love your present situation, no matter what it is. Whether you are penniless right now, with nothing at all, a broke nobody, covered in illness -- you must first accept it. Accepting it is the beginning of everything. Only after accepting it is there a process of transformation toward perfection, a process of development. Acknowledge it, accept it, appreciate it, thank it.

This is a truth that many people do not understand. When one day they read some inspirational articles, read some things, they begin to make harsh demands on themselves, harsh demands on their own thoughts. They take the requirements of so-called great people, or spiritual teachers, or certain others -- things that have already been beautified to the point of losing all human flavor -- and place those things upon themselves. Those are things that have already been beautified by later generations, excessively beautified or deified, and are not real at all. Yet you take them back and use them to demand things of yourself, tormenting yourself every day. In this state of daily self-torment, I want to ask you: where does your spirituality come from? Every day you are in a state of unhappiness with yourself -- how could you possibly have spirituality? It simply cannot arise. Therefore, Seth emphasizes here -- what he says in simple terms is: say goodbye to those inspirational cliches.

If you believe that the soul loses its nobility through its union with the flesh, then you cannot enjoy the feeling of being graced, because you believe that such a thing is impossible.

Many people believe that once the soul unites with the flesh, the soul loses its nobility. Because the soul is noble and the flesh is filthy, because the desires of the flesh are all base, while the desires of the soul are all elevated. They even divide human needs into several levels -- seven levels of human needs, from the lowest level of survival, food and drink, sex, then security, and finally self-actualization, and so on. In short, they believe the soul is noble and the flesh is filthy. Because the desires of the flesh are all so base, the same as other animals, they feel it is lowly.

If you believe this way, then you cannot enjoy the feeling of being graced, because you believe that such a thing is impossible. Why? Because you feel the flesh is filthy, and once the soul unites with the flesh, you yourself are no longer noble. Although the soul is noble, once it unites with the filthy flesh, the combination of soul and flesh -- which is you -- is no longer so noble either. Since you are no longer so noble, what right do you have to receive grace? You feel that only noble people, only elevated people can be graced, graced by nature and the universe. Therefore you feel you are not enough, that you do not deserve this grace, and so you feel it is impossible. And your beliefs create your reality -- if you feel it is impossible, then it truly becomes impossible. It is that simple.

The Positive Meaning of Aggressiveness

Your beliefs govern your interpretation of all emotions.

Your beliefs govern your interpretation of all emotions, meaning the power of interpretation lies entirely with you. Your beliefs are the final authority on how you interpret your emotions.

For example, many people believe that anger is always bad.

Many people think this way: no matter the circumstances, getting angry is never good. That is why we humans even invented the ring -- supposedly the reason rings were invented was to prevent those kings or officials from slamming the table when they got angry¹. When they slammed the table, the ring would hurt, and that sensation would remind them not to lose their temper. So the "ring" as in "admonition ring" -- the meaning is to remind oneself.

But in certain circumstances, anger can be an exhilarating and most therapeutic emotion.

In certain circumstances, if you have ever been angry, you know that when a person is angry, words simply flow with eloquence. All the emotions and thoughts become quick and sharp, and things you could never think of suddenly come to mind. The body's adrenaline surges, and you assume a fighting posture. Although in today's society the possibility of actually fighting is very rare, this state of anger nevertheless gives a person a primitive, explosive sense of combat power. It is most exhilarating -- your hair can even stand on end, so angry that your hair lifts your hat.

So then you can understand that for many years you have been operating under opposite beliefs, causing your emotions to shrink back. Under these opposite emotions you have made your emotions all curl up -- the phrase "shrink back like a turtle" is so vivid. You no longer dare to express your true self, and you do not even dare to get angry. Because other people told you that anger is bad. How can a cultivated, highly educated person get angry? You should not get angry; you should have self-restraint. How can you stand there cursing like a vulgar old woman in the marketplace? That is not proper. You see, you are influenced by these emotions, and you have set up all kinds of rules and restrictions for yourself.

Then in your anger you will rebel against those beliefs and truly begin a new life of freedom.

In your anger you should rebel against those earlier beliefs that made you shrink back. Many people break through themselves in a moment of rage -- this happens often. That is why in Zen Buddhism there are many cases of the stick and the shout. The master would hit you -- at certain times it seems very strange, he hits you or shouts at you for no apparent reason. This is the "stick and shout." Of course there are many reasons for this, and you can look up the Zen koans if you want; I will not go into them here. Many times, it is precisely in such a state that he makes you feel something.

Let me tell a very simple little example, a story from Zen Buddhism. There was an old monk living on a mountain. The old monk's cultivation was extremely high, and people came from all directions to seek his help and ask him questions. The old monk had only one young disciple, and the young disciple lived with the old monk on the mountain every day. Every time many people asked the old monk questions, telling him all about their experiences, all their suffering, and their current problems, the young monk noticed that no matter what the people below said, after they finished, the old monk would simply extend one finger, gently wave it, and then say nothing. Then many of the people below would directly say, "Oh, Master, I have attained enlightenment. You have awakened me." This happened a lot. The young monk did not understand either. Why did these people attain enlightenment? How did they attain it? Just by waving a finger?

Then one time, the old monk went out traveling and told the young monk to watch over the place. It happened that someone came seeking the old monk's help, saying he had a question that needed the old monk's instruction. But the old monk was not there; he had gone on a long journey. The young monk said, the old monk is not here, come back after a while -- the master has left, and I do not know when he will return. But in ancient times this person had crossed mountains and ridges and walked a very long way to get here. He said: since the old master is not here, could the young master explain it to me, so that my long journey and my climb up this high mountain will not have been in vain? The young monk thought: is that not simple? Is it not just a matter of waving a finger? So he said to the man, sure, go ahead, what is your question? Then the man explained his situation. After he finished, the young monk imitated the old monk -- because he followed the old monk every day, he imitated him perfectly, sitting there and gently waving his finger. The person below immediately said "Wow," and was suddenly enlightened, as if awakened from a deep dream: "Ah, young master, you are so young, yet you have such profound attainment. You have truly awakened me." And he left joyfully, enlightened.

The young monk was also completely baffled, but he felt very happy, because he too could help others attain enlightenment. When the old monk returned, the young monk joyfully told him: "Master, let me tell you something interesting. While you were away, so-and-so came, and he wanted such-and-such, so I followed your method, gently waved my finger like this, and he attained enlightenment and left joyfully." Then the master smiled and asked the young monk: "How did you wave it? Show me. How did you wave it that made him attain enlightenment?" At that moment the young monk imitated the old monk, gently waving his index finger. Then the old monk grabbed a cleaver from the chopping board beside him, and with sharp eyes and quick hands, in one stroke he chopped off the young monk's finger². The young monk's finger was cut off in an instant. The young monk looked at the old monk, and he too attained enlightenment -- the finger was gone, and he was enlightened.

In Zen Buddhism there are many such Zen devices and koan stories. You can look them up; they are very interesting. Each person's feeling of awakening is different. I will not explain it here, because we cannot understand the state of mind of the young monk and the old monk at that moment. You can ponder it; there is much that is interesting in it.

What I mean by telling this is that under normal circumstances, when many emotions arise -- for example, when you are upset or angry -- you should express them. You cannot suppress yourself. When you rebel -- as the saying goes, "even a rabbit will bite when cornered" -- many honest people who suppress themselves will eventually explode. When they truly explode and get angry, after that sudden outburst one day, they will understand many things clearly. They will realize they should have done this long ago, that they should not have endured until now, that they could not keep enduring forever, and that they should have erupted like this long ago.

Normal aggressiveness is basically a natural method of communication, a way of letting another person know that he has overstepped his bounds.

When you get angry, you are letting the other person know that they have gone too far, that they have exceeded the limits of what you can endure. It is that simple. You are telling the other person: you have crossed the line, do not go any further. In the animal kingdom this is perfectly normal and natural.

It is a method of preventing violence rather than causing it.

You must remember: getting angry and normally expressing this emotion of anger is not meant to cause violence; it is meant to prevent violence. It is often the endurance, the belief that one should not get angry, that eventually accumulates and leads to a much greater violence in the end.

The Natural Aggressiveness of Animals

The natural aggressiveness of animals is carried out with the greatest biological instinct.

If you have seen animals fight, you know that whether it is cats or dogs, when they fight, their states have already become stylized. When you see cats and dogs meet, if they are about to fight, their states are all the same. A cat makes that "hiss--" sound, a very terrifying sound meant to scare the other, its whole fur standing up and bristling, the fur on its tail all puffed out, looking extremely fierce, making a particularly frightening sound. Dogs are the same; a dog barks wildly, barking very loudly to scare the other. What is it doing? It is scaring the other: do not come any closer, or I will attack you. For animals this is instinct; when it encounters danger, it naturally does this.

On the other hand, there is a complete spontaneity, and among animals, this is understood.

Animals all know this: when the other sends out a danger signal, it knows not to come any closer. Unless you really want to fight the other, do not come any closer.

The natural aggression of animals has various degrees, and its postures and meanings are also different; these are all a series of communications.

Different animals, in different situations, also express this aggressiveness differently. When animals fight, you can see that when they counterattack upon encountering danger, it is a series of movements, one step after another. Through this kind of communication, each other's intentions become very clear. What intention? Do not come any closer; if you come any closer, I will strike. The other will also weigh whether it can beat you: if it cannot beat you, it will run or avoid you; if it can beat you, then it will continue to provoke.

In general, before any actual battle occurs, animals have already engaged in a very complex series of symbolic actions.

If you observe carefully, it is especially interesting. However:

The display of aggressive behavior mostly prevents actual combat from occurring.

Most of this aggressive behavior--pouncing, scaring, barking wildly, sending danger signals--what is its purpose? To prevent combat, to avoid fighting this battle; you had better retreat in the face of difficulty and stay away from me. This is normal; aggressiveness is meant to stop violence and reduce violence.

Humans have a very emotional and ambivalent attitude toward aggressiveness, and each person's beliefs about aggression also give rise to many group and individual problems.

We are not as direct, natural, and instinctive about aggressiveness as animals are; we are very emotional about it. There are too many examples to list, from two individuals to two countries, two races, two religions--it is all like this.

Confusing Aggression with Violence

In this book, we will touch on these issues. In your society, the natural communication of aggression has already been destroyed.

Actually, this is also somewhat true in other societies, not just ours; other societies have it too. Within our human society, aggression itself, as a natural means of communication, has already been destroyed.

You confuse violence with aggression, and do not understand the creative activity of aggression, or that it can be used as a method of communication to prevent violence.

We treat aggression and violence as the same thing, lumping them together, and do not understand the benefits of aggression -- it is itself a creative activity, and a method of communication that prevents violence.

In fact, you deliberately suppress the communicative component of aggression, and overlook its many positive values, until its natural force builds up more and more and finally erupts into violence.

You overlook the positive values of aggression, until its natural force builds up more and more and finally erupts into violence. Violence is a distortion of aggression -- be sure to remember this. Violence is a distortion of aggression, and basically it only happens in the end under extreme accumulation and extreme suppression.

Birth is also an act of aggression -- a self thrusting outward from the mother's body with great impetus into a new environment. Any concept of creation has aggression in it.

Any concept of creation -- as long as you have a concept of creation, it has aggression in it.

Violence is not aggressive; on the contrary, violence is non-aggressive.

This is the opposite of many of our views. We think aggression is violence, and violence is aggression. It says violence is actually not aggression.

On the contrary, violence is a passive surrender to emotion.

We have not understood or assessed this emotion; instead, we fear it. We fear this emotion, and at the same time we pursue it -- we are both afraid of this emotion and also seek it out. If we think carefully, this is often how it is in life. If you carefully observe the whole state of two people arguing until they finally start fighting, this is exactly what it looks like. From the initial probing to the end, the two of them know this emotion is not right, and they also know this way of doing things is not right, but both of them are caught in this emotion, both afraid that it will become uncontrollable in the end, and also wanting to pursue it, placing themselves in a state of anger and rage. So this is a very subtle matter.

Violence is basically a surrender to the full force of emotion.

It is a surrender.

In all violence, there is a large element of suicidal emotion.

This is something many of us have not paid attention to.

It is the opposite of creativity.

Creation is certainly not suicide. Any creation, whether artistic creation, the creation of life, or other creative acts in life, is not suicide, and is not destruction. But violence often carries an emotion of destruction.

In war, for example, the killer and the killed are both caught up in the same passion, but this passion is not aggression.

People in war often say they "see red" when killing; they are not attacking. This kind of red-eyed violence is not aggression, but its opposite -- a desire to destroy.

The same is true in many personal fights. If you have ever been in a fight, if you have ever fought with someone, whether in your youth or at other times, you may have had this experience. For example, the violent behavior of street punks brawling carries a very strong destructiveness. This destructiveness implies a feeling of wanting to risk one's own life against the other person -- "I don't care about my life anymore, I'll fight you to the death." Grabbing a brick, a bottle, a machete, and just hacking away. He also knows that at that moment he has put his own life aside, fighting without regard for his life. We often say that young people fight without caring about their lives, not knowing how serious it is -- at that moment he has actually already factored his own destruction into it. So this kind of violence itself is not aggression, and it has even less creativity. Violence is actually a surrender to emotion: the emotion is too big, he cannot control it, so he lets the emotion drag him along, and in the end it leads to violence.

This is something we usually tend to overlook. And this violent behavior itself implies a great deal of suicidal emotion, which many people do not notice. But if you think about it carefully afterward, you find that these so-called street fights and gang affairs all carry a very strong suicidal quality. You often see dozens or even hundreds of people charging at the other side, swinging machetes and hacking wildly at each other, killing others, getting killed themselves, or being severely wounded. When a crowd of people rushes into this kind of armed melee, each person actually already knows that this is not much different from suicide.

Know that this desire to destroy is caused by a feeling of despair arising from a sense of powerlessness.

Seth analyzes this person's psychology very deeply. The desire to destroy is caused by a sense of powerlessness and despair. We have all experienced this, so I will not elaborate further. So a person who actually commits violence is in fact very desperate inside; he has a deep sense of powerlessness, and he will resort to that extreme method of violent attack.

Aggression leads to action; it is the creativity and life that lead to action.

In Seth's terminology, aggression is a positive word, a normal expression. All of our actions are produced by aggressive force; without aggressive force, without aggression, we would have no powerful action.

It does not lead to destruction, violence, or total annihilation.

It does not lead to destruction. It can lead to partial destruction, or partial violence, but not total annihilation.

A Repressed Example

Let us take a simple example. Suppose there is a good man in a fairly ordinary environment in your society.

He gave an example: he was taught that a real man should be aggressive. He was told that to be a man, a real man ought to have some aggressiveness. This exists in many places -- for example, in places where male chauvinism is more prevalent, there will be this kind of social atmosphere, saying that a man should be aggressive. A real man walks with a swagger, and talks like this: "What are you looking at me for?" "What's it to you if I look at you?" Just like that.

But he believes this refers to fighting. And as an adult, he does not like fighting.

As an adult, he also knows the consequences of fighting: you get thrown in jail, you have to pay compensation. The simple outcome is paying compensation and detention; if it is serious, you get locked up; if it is even more serious, you get a life sentence or the death penalty -- all of these are quite possible. If you beat someone to death, then you get the death penalty. He does not like fighting, and he knows this too. But his surroundings give him this feeling: a real man should be aggressive.

At the same time, society may tell him that when he is unhappy, he must yield another step. Society tells him to yield another step, to be a gentle and considerate good person. This is very interesting. You know that in real society, your violent side is only something you think about in your mind; you really do not dare to actually carry it out. Even those so-called street thugs, or those people who seem manly and chauvinistic, are actually not like that in the workplace. It is very interesting. If you observe carefully, those who are chauvinistic at home are good-natured people outside. With their colleagues, with the relationships around them, with their clients, they are very easygoing people, and sometimes even people who love to show off. But when they get home, they change. They really become a real man, and they vent all the anger they have absorbed outside onto the family.

Because society tells him that outside you can be one kind of person; but when he gets home, he feels he no longer needs to follow society's rules.

His society taught him that this gentle disposition was feminine. All his life he has tried to hide what he thought of as aggressive, violent behavior, and tried to be an understanding and kind person.

All his life he has hidden this violent behavior, this aggressive behavior, because he thinks aggression equals violence. This is one of his misunderstandings.

This pattern is of course not true. It has to do with distorted ideas about men and women.

This has to do with distorted ideas about gender between men and women -- saying that women must be obedient, docile, well-mannered and reasonable, while men should be aggressive; men take charge outside and women take charge inside, and so on. These are all distorted ideas.

Because he tries to be so understanding, he suppresses many expressions of normal anger that could have been used as a natural way of communication between him and his superiors or family members. These suppressed reactions are all seeking release.

Because aggressive emotional expression establishes a natural balance within the body. When you release it, when the suppressed aggression is released, it reaches balance. The more you do not let it release, the more you suppress it, the more unbalanced it becomes, and the more dangerous it becomes. At the same time, it also serves as a system of communication with others.

When you are a little tougher with your boss, or when you show this kind of aggression, your boss will hold back somewhat. This is very normal. If you do not show this aggression, then he will become even more overbearing. He will criticize you in big meetings and small meetings, using you as a typical example to criticize, because you are a soft persimmon that is easy to squeeze. If he criticizes you, you will not resist. As for those prickly people, he does not dare criticize them, because he knows the prickly ones will make him lose face and will talk back to him to his face. He does not dare use the prickly ones as examples. But you are not like that; you are just a soft persimmon. It is that simple. So when you show normal aggression, you are actually establishing a normal communication system with your boss.

When his body and mind can no longer take it, he is likely to react with violent behavior.

When he reaches a limit, when he truly cannot endure it anymore, when neither his body nor his mind can endure it, he will be led to a violent reaction.

He may suddenly find himself fighting with someone over a trivial matter, seriously injuring himself and others.

A very trivial matter may also become a triggering opportunity. He directly injures someone, or even directly pulls out a gun and kills someone. Because in China there are no guns, but in America it is very normal to own guns. So every year in America there are many cases where, because of office problems, managers and bosses are shot dead by their own employees who rush in with guns³. And these employees were, relatively speaking, not the kind of people one would think of as troublemakers -- people who are usually fierce and covered in tattoos. No, such people actually would not do this. They have already released their anger at work. They do not have the thought of killing their boss, because they usually directly voice their dissatisfaction, and the boss does not dare to bully them.

On the contrary, it is those people who are usually especially docile, especially well-behaved, who seem like they would never do anything extreme -- everyone thinks, how could this happen to him? How could he go to the office and kill his boss and immediate supervisor? But in real life, it is often exactly this kind of thing that happens. Seth explains the reasoning behind this very clearly: he suppressed it until he could no longer take it, and he never dared to resist all along.

Usually animals are more natural in this regard, and therefore your body and mind could have handled it. Only when the natural expression of aggression is cut off does violence occur.

Animals are natural. We can handle aggression. Only when we do not allow aggression to express itself naturally does violence occur. When your normal aggression wants to express itself, and you do not let it, then violence occurs.

In this kind of violence, you feel very powerful, precisely because of the sudden release of suppressed energy. But in that case, you personally are forever controlled by this energy, submerged in it, and passively carried along by it.

That kind of suppressed aggression ultimately leads to a very strong outburst. This violent behavior itself carries great power, and this energy and power is something you cannot control. You are carried along by it.

Fear of your own emotions causes far greater damage than their expression could.

That is, your fear of your own emotions causes greater damage than letting them express naturally would. You are afraid of your own emotions, and this is more damaging than actually letting those emotions express themselves. In other words, when you have aggression, when you have such emotions, just let them express. There is actually no harm; it is not as serious as you think. But when you are afraid of such aggressive emotions arising, and you do not allow yourself to express them, then the harm is even greater. Because you are afraid of this emotion, and the intensity of this fear accumulates more and more, and then you strengthen the energy behind the fear. Fear of what? Fear of this emotion -- fear of the thought of wanting to talk back to your boss. You feel this is wrong, that you should not have such thoughts. You are afraid of this emotion itself.

Body Language and Natural Communication

Because you have a conscious mind, you have a great deal of room in the ways you express aggression.

You do not have only one way to express aggression. It is not just rushing up and throwing coffee in his face, nor is it the one method of choking him half to death. There are far too many methods like that. Because we have a conscious mind, you have a great deal of room.

But the animal inheritance still maintains its original appearance.

You must remember this: we have an animal inheritance in here. Although we have a great deal of room -- for example, we can go to a rage room, write your boss's name on it, or paste his photo on a punching bag, and then beat him up like boxing to release your anger; there are ways like that -- but your animal inheritance will still be like nature. At this time it is a body language, and you cannot change your body language.

For example, frowning is a natural method of communication, meaning that you have already provoked me, or I am already angry. If you want to frown but tell yourself to put on a smile, you are interfering with your own natural expression and refusing an appropriate communication with the other person.

Tell the other person your true feeling -- what you really feel is that I am angry, you have pissed me off. You use your eyes, roll your eyes, frown, use your expression; these are all normal. But if at this time you force yourself to say, "Oh, I should not be like this, this is very bad," and you force a smile on yourself, force a cheerful face -- that is this state: inside your heart you are already grinding your teeth with hatred, yet on the surface you still force a cheerful face. At this time you have not expressed yourself normally, and you have also lost an opportunity to express.

If a person is a nice guy in the company, smiling at everyone, and also smiles at you from beginning to end, then you do not know whether you have actually communicated with him or not. No matter what you say, he smiles at you. Are the two of you communicating? Do you know what he is thinking? You do not know; you have no idea what he is thinking, because he keeps smiling all the time, as if wearing a smiling mask.

At the same time, the voice in speaking also has its own patterns; it can indicate through sound whether one is angry or not. And natural aggression should change the pitch of the voice.

When we naturally have aggression, our pitch will naturally rise, and the other person can hear that we are angry. But if at this time you cover it up, if you suppress yourself, that is not good.

The body often exhibits many body languages, all of which are creative methods of communicating with people.

We have some body language -- body language -- all of which are creative methods of communicating with people.

As warnings of various degrees, each body language is moving, yet also ritualistic, with characteristic features, accompanied by muscular actions arising from its own meaning. These actions can be understood on a biological level, and they are all constructive, intended to evoke responses from others, in order to achieve a renewed understanding, a balance of power.

When you have this kind of body language, it is a natural reaction of the muscles. This process itself is active; it is not a fixed, dead thing, and it has a certain ritualistic quality -- for example, putting hands on hips, crossing arms over the chest, or some typical ritualistic movements. And through this muscular movement, this action itself can let you, and also let the other person, understand what the current state is. It lets you and each other both understand, and this understanding is constructive and very meaningful. It evokes responses from others: others will notice, hey, he is angry; hey, it seems I have touched his bottom line; hey, he has already kept his distance from me. These ways all let the other person have a deeper understanding of you, and also let you have a deeper understanding of yourself. At this time there is a kind of balance: your emotions have also been expressed, and you have also reached a state of balance. The other person also knows what you want to express, and the other person will also have his response, his body language, and his response will also feed back to you, and you also know his intention. This is very normal. Two people communicate through body language.

I am speaking very plainly and simply; we have all encountered this in life. For example, the simplest case: when two women are together, they will definitely size each other up, including the other's appearance, looks, figure, clothing, temperament, and all aspects, making a quick comparison with themselves. At this time different reactions come out, very subtle; if you observe carefully you can see them. These are all normal; expressing this kind of body language is all normal.

When your conscious thoughts interfere with this process, your trouble becomes great.

If you use your own consciousness to interfere with this process -- you tell yourself that I should not be like this, I should be a very nice person, I should be kind to others, when others provoke me I should not speak up, when I have anger in my heart I should not do such and such -- and so on, this kind of mental interference, then your trouble becomes great.

Why does your trouble become great? Because others do not know what you want to do; others have not grasped the true intention of your communication, because you have disguised it and covered it up. Then others will misunderstand your intention, which may lead to more serious consequences. Because you have already been provoked, but at this time you act as if you still smile at them, then others do not know they have already provoked you, and they may take some further actions, and those actions may really make you completely explode. This means your trouble becomes great; that is what it means.

The behavior patterns of animals are more restricted than yours, and in some ways freer and more automatic in expression, but also narrower.

We humans have a very large range of behaviors to choose from, while animal actions are very simple, and their behavior patterns are also simple. But animals are freer and more automatic. When two animals are together, whether intimate and friendly or in various other states, they are all natural, but also very narrow; the ways of expression are very simple, just a few kinds. The reason is that the things animals encounter are not that broad, not as many as ours -- animals just have those few things, claiming territory, seeking mates, and so on.

Biological Attributes and Spirituality

Unless you appreciate your biological attributes, you cannot appreciate your spirituality.

He puts it very directly. If you cannot appreciate your own biological attributes—this existence as an animal, this natural communication, this natural expression—then you have no way to appreciate your spirituality. If you deny your biological nature, you also deny spirituality.

This does not mean that you should transcend your biological nature, but rather that you should fully understand it and evolve forward from there. The two are different.

What he means is, you are not being asked to transcend your biological nature. The so-called transcending of biological nature means casting aside these biological base instincts—we are human, so we should not have the attributes of lower biological beings, we should completely transcend them, take the essence and discard the dross, treating these biological attributes as dross and getting rid of them. He says no. You should fully understand your biological nature and then evolve forward—that is, evolve. The two are different.

In other words, you normally acknowledge your biological nature, and then extend it further, or expand it further, rather than denying this biological nature of yours. You first acknowledge it, and then expand and develop on top of it. What he describes is a process of evolving forward—the two seem very similar, one is transcending it, the other is developing forward, but he says there is an essential difference.

You cannot attain a spiritual or joyful life by denying the wisdom and experience of your flesh.

This sentence is crucial. You cannot deny the wisdom and experience of your flesh and then attain a spiritual and joyful life.

If you observe animals, you can learn more from them than from a guru or a priest, or from my books.

He tells you that observing animals in nature will teach you more than following a guru, or reading Seth's books. Because within them there is a great deal of this natural wisdom and experience of the flesh, and this is the first step of our spiritual learning: first acknowledge the wisdom and experience of your own flesh, then develop from there, rather than denying it and then developing. Acknowledge it first, then develop.

But you must first rid yourself of the idea that "my biological attributes are suspect."

This must definitely be removed.

Your humanity is not born of your rejection of your animal heritage, but is built upon its extension.

This sentence is excellent—be sure to remember it. Your humanity did not arise because you rejected your animal heritage. Many people think that our humanity is what makes us different from animals, that we rejected our animal heritage and only then did the glory of our humanity emerge. He says no—it is not that we rejected our animal heritage, but that we are built upon its extension. We extend it on the foundation of this animal nature, rather than negating it, rejecting it, or refusing to acknowledge it.

This point is extremely critical—be sure to remember it. That is why you know, in traditional Chinese culture it is often said that "food and sex are human nature." These are the basic instincts of human beings, and you must never deny these things. But you cannot say that I only emphasize these two things, because then you have not carried them forward, you have not extended them—you have merely maintained the animal nature. What he means is, you cannot deny the existence of the animal nature, but you must extend and carry it forward on top of it. Both of these views are wrong: one is merely maintaining the animal nature, and the other is denying the existence of the animal nature—saying that the animal nature is entirely bad, that since the soul is so good and spiritual pursuits are so good, then all physical activities are filthy and vile. That is also completely wrong.

When you display your spirituality by cutting off your biological nature, you are no longer a joyful and satisfied natural creature, and you are still far from understanding true spirituality.

Many people display spirituality by cutting off their biological nature, and they have already become unnatural, because you have cut off your biological nature, you have denied its existence and its meaning, and you are still far from understanding true spirituality. So you will know that many practitioners who desperately deny their biological nature and desperately cut it off—Seth is actually speaking to them here.

Many who say they believe in the power of thought are so afraid of thoughts that they suppress them, avoiding any thought that appears negative or harmful, because even the slightest expression of aggression is blocked. These people believe that thoughts can kill, as if the object toward which such an impulse is directed had no powerful energy to protect itself and no natural defenses.

These people believe that thought is great, powerful, and mighty, while the flesh itself is inadequate, lowly, weak, and willing to bow for a meager living. They magnify the power of thought. Then Seth says: if you believe thought is so powerful, then why are you afraid of thought? You believe thought is powerful and can be used as a tool, so why are you afraid of it? Why do you not dare to face it directly, to understand it or acknowledge it? Moreover, these people believe that the aggression within thought can ultimately lead to the ability to kill.

He gives this example. Such people have this kind of idea: the object toward which such a thought is directed—that is, the person one thinks of killing—has no powerful energy to protect themselves and no natural defenses, so they are killed by you. Is that possible? Impossible—how could that be?

Here, often for different reasons, you find a hidden and distorted sense of power.

"I am so powerful that I could kill you with my thoughts, but I refuse to do so." Many people say this: "I could have killed you a thousand times over in my mind, but I am a merciful person, so I cannot do it."

No person, and no thought, is that powerful.

Be sure to remember: no person can kill you with a thought. If thought alone could kill, then you would not have the problem of overpopulation—there would be no need for wars, plagues, and diseases—thoughts alone would suffice, and there would be no need for all this trouble. Impossible.

So do not be afraid of your aggressive thoughts. These aggressive thoughts are normal, just like between animals—if one trespasses on another's bottom line, encroaches on another's territory, or steals another's mate, that kind of anger and aggressive behavior is entirely normal. Just express it naturally.

Each individual has his or her own natural energy and protective abilities.

Every person has natural energy and protective abilities. You only accept those ideas and thoughts that conform to your own belief system, and not only that, you also have other natural safeguards—you will not be killed by another person's thoughts. What he means by saying this is that you will not be killed by another person's thoughts. Another person's thought of killing you will not be accepted within your belief system, because you do not wish for someone else to kill you with a thought. So your thoughts are protected—protected by your own belief system, and of course there are other natural safeguards as well. What he means is that it is impossible to kill someone with a thought.

Sometimes you think that suicide is unwise and passive, while war is aggressive and beneficial. We consider suicide to be weak, cowardly, and passive, while war is active, aggressive, and very powerful. In fact, both are passive and distorted aggression, and the result of natural pathways of communication not being used and understood.

Suicide and war are the same—both are passive and distorted aggression, both are the result of natural pathways of communication not being used and understood. You can see that people who commit suicide all share a common trait: before they commit suicide, they have already stopped communicating with many people, their pathways of communication have already been shut down. People who commit suicide all share this common trait—they are no longer willing to communicate with others.

You think of a flower as gentle, beautiful, and kind, yet each time a new bud opens, there is a joyful burst of aggression.

You think a flower is gentle, beautiful, and kind, but he says that at the moment a flower blooms, its aggression is extremely strong.

It can hardly be called passive, but rather an active outward reaching and a fearless courage. Without aggression, your body could not grow.

The example he gives is the flower: without aggression, a flower could not grow; without aggression, your body could not grow either, because the cells within the body would fall into a state of inertia.

Aggression is the basis for the brilliant burst of creativity.

Without aggression, there would be no brilliance and burst of creativity. So we must maintain our aggression. This is the end of the dictation, and also the end of this session.

He says that if you want some material on probabilities, we will give it to you at another time, and this material will be given along with other reincarnational material. Because he has recently been asking Jane—he wants to talk more about the issue of probabilities, because when they discussed the death of their cat, many things about probabilities came up. Seth did not break his word; in Chapter 14 and Chapter 15 he will discuss these two topics. The rest is unrelated to this book and concerns some issues from the ESP class.

Although it was very late, they were both sleepy and full of energy, energetic and feeling exhausted at the same time—this very contradictory feeling, but that is how it was at the time. Rob's hand was sore from writing, so you can tell how long he had been writing.

The Case of Angela: How Beliefs Shape Reality

Today we are looking at the second part of Chapter 11 of The Nature of Personal Reality. This session took place on Monday evening, February 17, 1973⁴. Rob said that since the previous session the two of them had been extremely busy, so he had only typed one page, and now neither of them could remember the rest of what Seth had said. Jane laughed and said that since she was in a trance state when Seth came through, she could say she had not heard it -- that was her excuse, so what was his? Rob said he had no excuse at all. They had been too busy for a while and had not kept up with the recording work for this book.

In this session, Seth used a phone call a woman made to Ruburt as a case study to discuss how conscious beliefs affect emotions and behavior. The young woman who called was a blonde named Angela. Angela was in her early thirties, divorced, with three children.

Angie's Predicament: Beliefs Expressed Through the Body

Angie called Ruburt and said she had lost her job this morning, but that was not all. Within a week, she had become caught up in very negative situations and emotionally charged encounters -- a young man she had been seeing began avoiding her, and a salesman made her lose face in front of a large crowd. Other recent encounters seemed to follow the same pattern, and finally she fell ill, was emotionally overstressed, and did not go to work, a situation that ultimately led to her losing her job. She told Ruburt that she felt she was a very inadequate person, unable to cope with her coworkers and with the world.

Session 643

Seth said she had always held this kind of viewpoint, and those beliefs were all unconsciously expressed through her body:

Those beliefs were all unconsciously expressed through her body, through gestures, expressions, and tone of voice, expressing her emotions through her body.

Her entire body was anticipating frustration, and no matter what happened, she used that mindset -- the mindset of expecting the worst -- to interpret everything that happened around her. All the information entering her body and mind was screened and weighed, selecting out the information that matched and reinforced her beliefs, while information and events that contradicted them were largely ignored or distorted to fit exactly into her ideas.

Seth explained the mechanism by which beliefs work:

Conscious beliefs focus your attention and direct it in one direction, and then direct your energy, so that you can quickly bring concepts into physical experience.

Your beliefs focus all your attention in a certain direction, and then you also direct your energy, allowing this idea to manifest and be brought into physical experience. And those beliefs also act as a kind of barrier, casting aside some information you cannot accept, while at the same time maintaining the integrity of your original beliefs.

Therefore Angela did not see or ignored the smiles directed at her, and in some cases, she even viewed some beneficial things that might have prompted her to change and helped her life as negative. Because her entire belief held that she was a very inadequate person, and this kind of belief guidance led to the occurrence of this kind of reality.

The Rise of a Positive Belief: A Contrast Between Two Beliefs

On the phone, Ruburt kept comforting her. Ruburt reminded Angela that she had a basic uniqueness, and the fact that she was creating her own reality through her beliefs. Ruburt also mentioned that Angela, as a person existing in this world, had her own true value. Because Ruburt believed in Angela's value, this positive belief rose up and pushed the other belief aside -- what was the other belief? The belief that "I am no good."

During the daytime that same day, Angela could already see the two beliefs. Before, she could only see one, namely that negative belief that she was no good. Now she could see two: one was that she felt she was quite valuable, and the other was that she still felt she was no good. She believed she was unique and good, and at the same time she believed she was inferior and bad. At different times, one of these beliefs would color her experience and completely shut out the other.

Just before this session, Angela called Ruburt again. She realized that those situations had been caused by not honestly dealing with her own conscious thoughts.

The Key Turning Point: From Victim to Initiator

What had she not dealt with honestly? She had wanted to leave her original job and find another one. She had had this idea all along, but she did not dare to put it into action. She was afraid, because she was a single mother of three children. So she created certain circumstances that made the decision to "leave the job" seem not to be hers to make.

This is a very crucial point. In daily life, many of us have this kind of state. For example, she wants to leave someone, and she is already very clear that she no longer likes this person, but she makes no decision and takes no action. She just keeps looking for various reasons, waiting for the other person to bring the matter up, or waiting for something to happen before making a similar decision.

It seemed that she was the victim of those jealous, unsympathetic, and unfeeling coworkers, as well as the victim of a boss who would not support her. But now she understood that she was not the victim -- this is a key turning point. The key is right here: you have to free yourself from the victim mentality. This is the most crucial step in solving all problems. She was not the victim; she was the initiator. It was she who set these things in motion.

During that period, her feelings faithfully reflected her conscious beliefs. She fell into self-pity and self-blame, and these caused the weakness in her body.

Accepting Feelings as They Are: Feelings Are Not Facts

Ruburt, during their second conversation, gave her some very good advice, explaining to her how to make this kind of feeling beneficial. Ruburt advised Angela to accept these feelings as they were, as "feelings" -- this is the key point.

When you feel pain, then truly feel it; when you feel helpless, then truly feel it. Do not suppress them; truly accept your present state and your present self. But you must hold them with this understanding: they are only a feeling about reality. No matter what kind of feeling you are having right now, do not suppress it; treat it as a feeling you have about reality, and go along with these feelings.

Those feelings themselves are real, expressing an emotional response to beliefs. For example, the next time Angela felt she was no good, she should actively experience that feeling rather than suppress it, and not say the kind of self-comforting words like "I am not no good now." How could she not be no good? She was indeed no good in that situation at that time -- an unemployed single mother with three children, having gotten herself into this position; she really was quite no good.

But the key point is: feeling that she was no good did not mean she really was no good. To acknowledge the feeling, she should say: "I feel inferior." At the same time, understand that this feeling is not a statement of fact, but a statement of emotion.

When you truly face your emotions -- whether good or bad, and here we are mainly talking about the bad ones -- you must first accept and acknowledge the emotion. Then you must realize: this emotion is merely an emotion; it does not represent you, nor does it represent the fact. When you feel very inferior, it only means you now feel very inferior. It must be "I feel very inferior about myself," but it does not mean I really am inferior. I feel that I am very no good, but it does not mean I really am very no good.

You must acknowledge the fact of "I feel," and also acknowledge the emotion, but this emotion and this feeling are not a fact; they are only a feeling, a sensation you have about the present environment. Do not use it to define your surroundings or yourself by saying: my environment is very no good, and I am also very no good. You only feel very no good; that does not mean you are very no good.

We always treat what we think or what we feel as real, because you are trapped in that emotion and cannot pull yourself out. That is why many people who go through a breakup end up committing suicide -- he feels so useless, so lacking in a sense of worth, with no meaning in living at all. Because he is trapped in that emotion. So at this time, if someone beside you pulls you out and tells you: all these feelings of yours are valid, you can properly enjoy and feel this feeling, but you must clearly recognize this fact -- this feeling is not equivalent to the real you; it is only a real feeling of the real you.

Experiencing your emotions in this way is different from accepting them as a statement of fact about your existence. Experiencing this emotion does not mean treating it as fact. This emotion is a fact, but this emotion is not the actual situation of the event, nor is it your actual situation.

In other words, the same thing placed on some other people might not be a fact. The boy you like so much breaks up with you, and you may be devastated, as if life is not worth living. But perhaps in front of someone else, that kind of boy would not even be liked at all. What meaning is there in being so devastated over such a person? You say, well, it does not matter to others, but it matters a lot to me. The meaning of "it matters a lot to me" is -- still a feeling, still just your feeling. You are living for feelings, not living for facts.

Angela should ask herself this kind of question: Why do I feel so no good about myself?

If you deny the effect of the emotion itself and pretend it does not exist, you will never be led to question the beliefs behind it.

This emotion has only one function: to make you ask yourself, "Why do I feel so no good about myself?" This is the function your emotions and feelings should serve -- to make you dig deep into what the belief behind this emotion and feeling really is. Only in this way do your emotions and feelings have their meaning.

Analyzing Angie's Beliefs: A Conflicting Belief System

Seth begins to analyze Angie's inner thoughts. Why does she feel so bad about herself? Because Angie believes her life is necessarily difficult. Why? Because someone once said to her: a woman without a man is in a very difficult situation. Especially a woman with children.

That one statement alone has frightened many women. Women who should have been pursuing a happy life scared themselves with just such a belief and settled for a mediocre existence their whole lives. There are many people like this.

She believes a new partner is almost impossible to find. Because someone told her the children need a father, and then at the same time she feels that no man wants to get involved with a woman who has children. So this is where she is torn: on the one hand, she feels the three children should have a father, that it cannot be this kind of single-parent family -- someone told her that, and she believed it; but at the same time she believes she cannot find a suitable man, because no man would be willing to marry a single mother with three children. And then she also believes that life without a man must be very hard. The contradictions among these beliefs are enormous.

In her early thirties, she seems to feel that youth is fleeting. She feels awkward at this age, as if youth is about to leave and she is only clinging to the tail end of it. And according to this imagining, she cannot imagine that in a few more years, when she is almost forty, anyone would still be willing to marry her. Therefore her beliefs place her in a situation full of crisis.

She is very afraid -- afraid that no one will marry her, afraid of growing old alone. Her beliefs are constantly suggesting to her that she will surely attract the very things she fears. Beliefs determine all the emotions that follow.

Seth tells you: just change those beliefs, and the crisis will no longer exist.

When your beliefs change, the crisis ceases to exist. The body will also stop reacting to this stress, and almost immediately, the outer circumstances will change accordingly.

The most crucial part is that last sentence: almost immediately, the outer circumstances will change accordingly. Many suitors will appear, and her emotional life will undergo a tremendous shift. Because she no longer has those negative emotions -- she no longer believes she cannot find the right person, no longer believes she is no longer young, no longer believes she does not deserve a happy family and a perfect partner.

As long as you change the beliefs, the crisis ceases to exist, and your body's reactions will stop accordingly. Think about it: under this kind of anxiety and fear, how could this woman still show her beautiful side? She lives every day in this fear and crisis, full of negative emotions about the future. The moment she imagines living out her whole life alone, struggling to raise three children, just thinking about the days ahead becomes unbearable torment. So how does she feel? I think no one could endure that kind of life.

The solution to this problem is very simple: just change your own beliefs. No one else can do it for you. If you still insist on holding onto that belief, then there is nothing to be done. If you want to change your current situation, there is only one way -- change your beliefs, and then your outer environment will immediately change accordingly. Why not give it a try? What do you have to lose by changing your beliefs? Does changing your beliefs cost you a single penny? What harm could come from trying a change? Give yourself twenty-one days -- just change your beliefs for twenty-one days and see what good things happen. If it does not work, you can always change back to your old ways. Beliefs are just like clothes -- is it not simply a matter of wearing this one today and that one tomorrow? Why not give yourself a chance to try?

Telepathic Transmission of Beliefs

Seth goes on to talk about how beliefs influence the people around you:

At the same time, all beliefs will be known to the other party, not only through fairly unconscious body language, but telepathically as well.

This is a core point. How does it work? Once your beliefs change, the people around you all know it. They know it not only through your unconscious body language, but also through telepathy — everyone around you becomes aware of it. Aware of what? Aware that you believe the future is very bright, aware that you believe that even though you are a single mother in your thirties with three children, you still believe you are very beautiful and very young.

Thirty may seem very old to some women, but to many women, thirty is such a young age — such a mature, happy, and abundant age. If you think thirty is a miserable age, then she really will be miserable.

When you have this kind of belief change, when you feel happy, feel beautiful, feel that you can have a wonderful relationship and a happy life, this telepathy of yours will be transmitted outward to the people around you, and others will all know. Once they know, you will attract events related to this belief.

You will always try to connect your own ideas with external experience. The abilities your inner self possesses will be used to materialize the image of the belief... and thus the "appropriate" emotion will be activated, bringing out the physical condition that exists within your conscious mind.

Your inner abilities will materialize and manifest your beliefs, and it does not care what kind of beliefs you have — it manifests whatever beliefs you have. It faithfully manifests according to your true beliefs. At this point you need to understand that your beliefs are crucial. Once you have manifested them, your emotions will be stirred up — when you feel valuable, excellent, beautiful, and happy, your emotions will follow and be activated, and the appropriate emotion — that is, the emotion of your positive belief — will be activated.

Typical Western Beliefs and Eastern Beliefs

Seth said this material was a way to help that young woman, and it helps others too, it helps everyone. This lesson he gave to Angela is a situation many young women encounter.

How many young, excellent women in our reality face this kind of problem: on the one hand she believes she is excellent, on the other hand she feels her age is no longer young. She is always comparing herself to those young girls, always magnifying her own shortcomings. Seth said:

I use Angela as an example because these typical Western beliefs all appear in her experience.

Those beliefs such as "getting old is a terrible thing" -- this is not just Western, the East has the same belief. "Without a man by her side, a woman is quite powerless" -- this Eastern belief is even stronger than the Western one. So many young women, especially single women in big cities nowadays, face tremendous pressure from family, from society, and from their surroundings, precisely because these people all share the same belief: if you are not married, your life is incomplete; your life is missing a piece; no matter how well your career is going, no matter how glamorous you look on the surface, when you get home you must be miserable, when you crawl under the covers at night you must be secretly crying. If you do not accept that, then fine, but if you accept their viewpoint, then you will live in great pain.

These are all wrong ideas. Ideally life should be very simple, yet in reality it is extremely arduous -- this too is a belief, and this belief is also wrong.

These ideas all come from one basic belief, namely: the conscious self is powerless to form and direct its experience.

These experiences all come from one basic belief, namely: one is powerless. In this vast social system, one is as insignificant as a tiny speck of dust. The more you feel this way, the more powerless you feel, and so you cannot change. This is a fundamental belief that must be changed.

Analyzing Contradictory Beliefs

Angela is working hard to adjust her beliefs. Although she tells herself that age does not matter, she still believes that her attractiveness as a woman will diminish day by day. So because she feels this way, she presents herself as unattractive. When that belief is in operation, she really is unattractive - because she believes she is unattractive.

Her good fortune lies in being able to check her actual experience against her beliefs, and she is smart enough to see where she has made great progress. She is able to reflect, and to discover that she can become very beautiful and very attractive. But Seth goes on to say:

Those who try to be "good" do so because they are not sure of their basic worth.

People who do everything well are not sure of their own worth. And those who talk about having a youthful body and mind - it is because they are very afraid of growing old. The more someone emphasizes to you, "My mindset is very young," the more they are afraid of aging. Some people always ask others, "Do you think I look young?" Many women dress themselves up to look very young, get beauty treatments, work out, do yoga - the core idea behind all of these things is one thing: fear of aging.

Likewise:

Many who clamor for independence do so because they are afraid they are helpless.

Why does he want to be independent? Because he is afraid that others have not helped him. So rather than being embarrassed when no one helps me, I might as well say it early - I am independent, I do not need your help.

Many people say they are committed to staying single, or say, "This is just how I am, I do not need to look anymore" - "I have already passed the best age for finding a partner, I am already thirty-eight, or I am almost forty, I am not going to look anymore. I feel that since I did not find anyone when I was young, it is even harder to find someone now, so I will just live my life independently on my own." Many women after the age of thirty-five start secretly buying insurance for themselves, making plans for the latter half of their lives. She is presupposing that for the rest of her life she will live alone in solitude. She declares to the outside world that she just likes being alone, shopping alone, being free and easy on her own, dating whomever she wants, falling in love with whomever she wants - she does not need a family at all.

When she says this, what is actually going on? Actually, she is very helpless. She is afraid of that feeling of helplessness, afraid that if she pursues these things she will not get them. These mental states are all very subtle, and Seth here simply brings them out into the open.

Facing Beliefs Honestly

Seth has said this repeatedly earlier: when we read this book, when we face our own beliefs, there is only one requirement for everyone -- be honest. Honestly face your own beliefs, whether they are good or bad, however filthy, however despicable, however timid, however helpless, however fragile -- bring them all out and take a look. This process is truly bloody. After this bloody recognition and dissection of your own beliefs, you will find that your life undergoes a fundamental change -- an earth-shattering change.

Because you have seen the deepest things in your beliefs that you have always been unwilling to confront squarely. Do you really want to be alone, or do you truly not dare to face this matter? What exactly are you afraid of? What are you hiding from?

Seth says:

In most instances, these opposing beliefs... you can see are quite consciously and deliberately held... Within your belief system, you often hold completely opposing beliefs of this kind, yet keep them quite separate from one another.

You keep these beliefs quite separate, so that they have no way of being reconciled. Since your emotions follow from your beliefs, different beliefs give rise to different groups of emotions. Sometimes a certain group of emotions seems to make no sense, as if an emotion comes out of nowhere -- that is because you have not allowed them to connect freely with some opposing ideas you may hold in your mind.

Emotionality: Beliefs That Have Not Been Recognized

Some people will say that older single men or women are very emotional. When they are being pressured to marry, or whenever the topic of marriage and relationships comes up among friends or colleagues, they will have excessive emotional reactions. You need to find where the root of this emotional reaction lies. If you do not find it, these emotions will all seem to come from nowhere — other people will not even know how they offended you. Perhaps the person speaking had no such intention at all; the speaker meant nothing by it, but the listener took it to heart, and it will trigger an enormous emotional aversion in you.

Seth's point is that when a cluster of emotions arrives, there is necessarily a deep-seated belief behind it, and you need to discover it.

A person can appear to be very open, and also very sensitive... Any reader might ask: my problem is that I am too emotional.

Many readers will say that their problem is precisely that they are too emotional — I do not know where the emotions come from, and I am completely led around by the nose by them. We call this emotionality: getting angry for no apparent reason, feeling depressed for no apparent reason, having one's mood turn bad for no apparent reason, without even knowing the cause oneself.

What Seth tells you is this: these so-called inexplicable emotions, and even when an emotional combination or an emotional cluster arrives, behind it there is a belief that you do not want to face and do not dare to face, supporting it. Your emotions are definitely caused and brought about by beliefs; they do not arise without cause. It is only a matter of whether you dare to face that belief.

After you have done some self-analysis, if you dare to face yourself honestly, almost everyone will discover that in some blocks, some regions, only a certain degree of emotion has been expressed, and the emotion has not been thoroughly expressed. This is a situation everyone encounters.

The reason for emotionality is that in some places the emotion you should have expressed was not expressed, was not completely expressed, because that belief was at work in the middle of it. In your heart you also know that belief is not good, but you do not dare to face it. You allow such a belief to remain within your belief system — you neither believe in this belief, nor dare to face it, yet you still allow it to remain inside. It will then, seemingly without cause, attract these negative emotions to you. Because you do not dare to face the fact that this belief is one you yourself hold, you will tell yourself: these emotions of mine come for no reason at all, they are inexplicable, I am an emotional person.

Many women put this label on themselves. As they grow older, under the suggestion of others and of family members, they will feel that they are becoming more and more strange: "How did I become so strange? How did I become so emotional?"

Emotionality is simply the emotion brought about by such a belief. You are afraid of it, and you have not allowed it to be fully released. But you cannot control it — it is caused by your belief. You clearly know the belief is not good, yet you do not dare to throw it away, and that leads to your present feeling that the emotion seems to come from nowhere. In fact it does have a source; you just do not dare to admit what that source is.

Emotions: The Driving Force of Action

No emotion will ever lead you into a dead end... Emotions are always in motion, and will always lead into another emotion... When it flows, it will change the condition of your entire body.

The flow of emotions will affect your entire body, triggering a whole series of chemical reactions throughout your body. Emotions transform into one another, one emotion leading into another, precisely because they are meant to be consciously accepted -- your beliefs give rise to such emotions precisely because they want you to accept these emotions. If you deny them, then you have not fully accepted them.

If you obstruct them, if you prevent the analysis of such emotions or refuse to face them squarely, then you will never be able to discover what the belief behind the emotion actually is. If you do not obstruct them, if you let the emotion develop, let it be expressed, let it flow, then through this emotion you can be led to the belief behind it, and gain a certain understanding of it.

But many times we do not dare. As soon as these negative emotions arise, we desperately try to suppress them, not wanting to investigate the belief behind the emotion. If you do not remove the root, it will come out again next time. The more you are afraid to dig at the root, the more it will come out again. After it has come out many times, you will begin to feel that this seems to be some kind of bad temper or quirk that is simply part of you, and then you label yourself. The root cause is that you did not follow the emotion downward and dig, dig down to the belief behind it, and if it is a bad belief, remove it. Once this action is completed, it is over, very simple -- maybe a few minutes, maybe one night, maybe a good cry, and the matter is past.

These various states of emotion are always the driving force of action... They should be actually expressed, and each one is based upon natural aggression.

Do not be afraid of emotions. Whether good or bad, they are all the driving force of your actions. Every emotion is built upon natural aggression -- do not feel guilty, do not feel embarrassed, do not judge yourself or criticize yourself. All of this is normal.

We humans have not understood the connection between creativity and aggression. We do not know that aggression is in fact the root, the source, and the driving force of creativity. The misunderstanding of true aggression will give rise to panic about all emotions. We feel that emotions are a bad thing, so when we say "so-and-so is very emotional," there is a derogatory connotation in that -- as if that person cannot be entrusted with important tasks.

If you do this, you cut yourself off from one of nature's best therapies. Your emotions have a healing effect on you, and denying them is equivalent to denying this natural therapy.

Aggressiveness and Creativity

Seth says:

Natural aggressiveness is the power source for all creativity.

Natural aggressiveness supplies the power source for all creativity. Without natural aggressiveness, all of your creativity would have no electricity.

Many people believe that love is the driving force behind creation, and do not think that aggressiveness is the driving force. People think love is the opposite of aggression:

Love and aggression have no such artificial division.

Most people think love and aggression are opposites, but in fact they have no division.

Natural aggressiveness is creative love rushing forward... natural aggressiveness is the method by which love is activated... natural aggressiveness is the fuel by which love propels itself.

This is stated very clearly. Many of us feel that the driving force of all human development, the foundation of human civilization, is love, and we elevate love to a supreme position, and then we say love and aggressiveness are opposites -- love should not have aggressiveness, love should be universal love, unconditional love.

Seth corrects you here: what truly gives love its power, what makes love move forward, what makes love realized, what makes love advance, and what makes love develop, is aggressiveness.

The essence of aggressiveness is not the violence you think of... aggressiveness is a force through which love achieves immortality.

Aggressiveness is a force. If love can endure forever, it must be because aggressiveness provides it with a continuous supply of energy and power. Love is also innovated and renewed, created and renewed, because of aggressiveness.

What he means by all this is to let you express naturally; all emotions are a natural expression.

When you think of aggressiveness in other ways... you fall into distorted views... you give energy to negative elements, which are then seen as threatening... wrong, or even endowed with demonic connotations.

We humans often say, "Impulse is the devil." This statement itself is wrong. Impulse is not the devil; impulse is the root and source from which all things in the world are set in motion. If a person no longer even has impulse, then that person has no real value or meaning either.

Seth points out:

"Good" -- we ordinarily regard good as weak, powerless, passive, and in need of defense.

We feel that good things, things of goodness, all need to be protected. In Buddhism there is a saying, "guard the good thought," meaning this goodness should be protected like a small flame. This concept itself is also fragile and wrong.

Where is the error? You define goodness itself as weak, passive, and in need of protection. That is not so. Goodness does not need protection. Goodness is the essence of all things -- the essence of everything in the whole world, the whole universe, all things in existence is goodness. You cannot turn it into evil even if you try; goodness is its inherent attribute. It does not need protection, and it is not weak.

Diluting Experience: Watering Down Your Life

Therefore you will be afraid of any powerful emotion. Because of these mistaken views above, you are afraid of any powerful emotion—afraid of your true self. To a very large degree, this will lead to your inability to accept the power and energy of your own existence.

You do not dare accept those very intense emotions and feelings. You are afraid, you do not dare face them truthfully, so you put on that indifferent, lukewarm state. What is this state? Seth explained it to you decades ago:

And forced to dilute your own experience.

You are diluting your own experience. This is not some sign of maturity, nor does it mean you are like some "Buddha-like youth" or "Buddha-like teenager" who has entered a higher realm. Wrong. You are deceiving yourself, you are fooling yourself, you are watering down your own life, you are watering down your own existence. You are pretending to live a bland, flavorless life, when in fact you are afraid, you do not dare face your true self.

You do not dare take a spur-of-the-moment trip, nor do you dare quit the job you already find so tiresome and loathsome, to live the life you truly want. You are afraid, you are terrified, and you do not dare face that fear and terror, so you use a so-called indifferent calm, a so-called dilution, a so-called peaceful mindset—like some artsy youth—to face all of it. Seth points it out with piercing accuracy: you are diluting your own experience, you are diluting your own life, you are diluting your own existence.

Go ahead and keep diluting. When it finally turns into plain boiled water, you will be satisfied, as if you have reached some kind of realm. But ask yourself honestly: do you really want your life to be like plain boiled water? Then why did you even come to this world for this one lifetime?

If you want something, go strive for it. If you want a certain kind of life, go strive for that kind of life. Do not be afraid of failure—failure is also one of your experiences. No one guarantees you will succeed, but the purpose of your life is not that final success; the purpose of your life lies in the experience along the way. Who says your life must end in great achievement and fame? Who says you must end up with children and grandchildren around you, blessed with fortune and longevity? Who set that rule for you? That may be some people's life goal, but it is not your life goal. Yet you take other people's things and make them your own goals, and then you start fearing this and fearing that—scared of wolves ahead and tigers behind, living a twenty-year-old's life with a sixty-year-old's mentality. So where did those forty years in between go? Watered down. Diluted by you.

Seth says:

This kind of belief has a strongly repressive characteristic... it will cause you to shut off powerful emotions by immediately viewing them as negative.

You shut off all strong emotions. You define them as being emotional, immature, irrational, not worldly enough—you slap a bunch of labels on them. When you see "Buddha-like youth" or "Buddha-like living," just think of a "water-injected life"—just like water-injected pork.

You will automatically begin to suppress any stimulus that might bring powerful emotion.

Whenever something might bring emotional stimulation, you refuse to do it at all, and you stay far away from it. Therefore you refuse yourself the feedback you need—refuse, do not dare, do not want. Why? Fear.

Ask yourself: which woman does not want a passionate, earth-shaking love? Which woman does not want a man's love, a man's companionship? But why have you turned your life into what it is now? Pure of heart and with few desires, like a nun—going to work alone, coming home alone, living alone, taking the subway alone, driving alone, traveling alone, watching movies alone.

Why? You are still afraid of those intense feelings, still afraid of those intense emotions, still afraid to face the possibility that someone might discover you are no longer young, still afraid that in the end the other person cannot walk with you to the end, still afraid that there will be no "growing old together" ending. Do you want that ending, or do you want the process? Do you want to wait until after death for the final verdict—"this person grew old with her partner, they treated each other with respect"—like some final verdict given to women in ancient feudal society? Or do you want to experience such a life? It is all up to you.

Men are the same: at a young age, they do not want to go out and build something, scared of wolves ahead and tigers behind. The moment they achieve a little success, they become complacent, and then they want to guard those fruits of victory, not daring to go all in, not daring to invest what they already have. We all know the story of Jack Ma's startup days—now it sounds like just a story. Ask yourself: how many people have Jack Ma's boldness, daring to mortgage or sell their own house to start a business? And which woman had the ability, the awareness, the foresight of Jack Ma's wife at the time, to support him? An English teacher who graduated from a teachers' college insisting on quitting to start a business—not content to be a good teacher—and not only starting a business, but selling the house too? I ask you: which woman today would dare do such a thing? And which man today has the boldness Jack Ma had back then?

You always want to hold on to what you currently have. You forget that you came into this world to experience, not to live this nine-to-five, day-after-day, robot-like, repetitive life. You should be different every day from the day before; every day should be like going on an adventure, exploring, creating something new. But because you are afraid.

Seth, through the story of this woman Angela, is actually telling all of us: how many such repetitive, conflicting, contradictory beliefs are at work in our own belief systems. We envy the rich every day, yet we do not dare take even one unconventional action. You do what all ordinary people do, you make the same decisions all ordinary people make, yet you expect to stand out one day—how is that even possible? You are following the direction everyone else is heading, walking the same road everyone else walks—how can you possibly stand out?

Only when you are afraid of emotions can you be controlled by them.

The more you fear these emotions, the more they control you.

They are the motion of your existence, walking hand in hand with your reason.

"They" refers to emotions. In other words, the foundation of your existence is propelled by emotions. Emotions are the source behind all the motivation for your actions. What we call impulse, what we call emotion—these are all the driving force that makes you act. If you do not even have emotions anymore, then you have no motivation to do anything—everything is lukewarm, half-dead, listless, and you cannot muster any energy for anything. You say, "It is not my fault—look, my job is so boring, how can I possibly get excited about it?" Who is holding a gun to your head forcing you to do this job? Why can you not go find a job that makes you passionate and excited?

"I no longer have feelings for my current partner; we have been an old married couple for so many years." Who is forcing the two of you to stay together? Your problems are your problems—if they can be solved, solve them; if they cannot, then separate. It is that simple. You blame everything on the other person—"all these years he has done this and that, I have done this and that"—you are making excuses for yourself. It is you who do not dare experience those emotions; it is you who are afraid to face those emotions.

In life we all encounter thousands upon thousands of such people: complaining on one hand, while continuing to live the same old life on the other. Seth says emotions walk hand in hand with your reason. When you are not aware of the contents of your conscious mind—and the contents of your conscious mind are your belief system—when you are not aware, when you are unfair to your feelings, then you have trouble. Think carefully: when did your troubles begin? Did they not all begin at such times? Everyone should observe this for themselves.

Later, because their house was being renovated and the surrounding buildings were very noisy, Jane ended the session there and did not continue. I hope everyone will seriously reflect on their own emotions and their own beliefs. Through this event of Angela—a woman in her thirties with three children, and the influence of her beliefs on her—let us reflect on ourselves, and on how we should walk through this life.

This Session Held in the Study

This session was held in Jane's study. Seth did not dive directly into the topic at the start, but first explained that he had previously given Jane another form of material -- not in the traditional way, but by giving her the ideas directly, which Jane then interpreted into words and wrote down herself. Now he was using his usual method again, dictating this material aloud.

Session 644

Ruburt did indeed receive some material from me, through another method, not the traditional one. That is, I gave him some future material, so to speak, so that he could put it to use in advance.

He said his previous method was to speak through Ruburt's mouth, which is one method. This time he used another method.

To him, this material seemed to come just like that, but it was not yet prepared as words and sentences. Instead, he received ideas, and he interpreted them into words and then wrote them down.

This material is related to the topic we are discussing, and he said he would now give it to you in his own way. What he means is, I gave Jane that material so that she would express it in her own words; now he is still using the traditional method, the method he has always used with Jane, speaking it in his own way.

Thoughts Are Cells, Belief Systems Are Organs

Seth first offered an analogy, comparing thoughts to individual cells and belief systems to the organs of the body.

I have often said that the mind-body relationship is a system, and it is a whole. Thoughts are as necessary to this whole system as the cells of the body are to the body.

If the mind and body are a system, just like our human body, then cells are very important to our body, and thoughts are equally necessary to our mind-body system.

Ruburt correctly interpreted an analogy I gave him, in which I compared thoughts to individual cells, and belief systems to the organs of the body -- those organs made up of cells. The organs appear to be fixed and stationary within the body, even though the cells within them are constantly dying and being reborn.

Relative to an organ, we are fairly stable. Whether it is our liver, kidneys, or heart, although the cells within them are constantly arising and passing away, the organ itself is relatively stable. Belief systems are as natural and necessary as the organs of the human body.

He compared our thoughts to cells, and belief systems to organs. We have different belief systems, just as the human body has different organs, and in different situations we switch into different modes. For example, regarding emotions, we have our own set of belief systems; regarding work, we have our own set; regarding right and wrong, our sense of justice, our worldview, our patriotic feelings, we each have our own set of belief systems. And thoughts exist within these belief systems, just as cells exist within organs. Thoughts are constantly arising and passing away, our mental ideas rise and fall, but belief systems remain unchanged, relatively stable.

In fact, the purpose of your belief systems is to help you direct your biological existence.

The function of belief systems is to direct your physical existence. You have no conscious awareness of the arising and passing of the cells within your organs, and that is normal, because you do not pay attention to them. In the same way, your thoughts naturally arise and pass away within your belief systems. Our thoughts and mental ideas rise and fall, but they arise and pass away within the belief systems.

And ideally, normally, your thoughts will balance themselves, maintain their own health, and direct the body. Therefore healing occurs naturally.

The healing of the body within the belief systems is the normal condition. As long as you do not interfere with it, it naturally has this function.

Belief Systems Attract Certain Kinds of Thoughts

Your belief system of course attracts certain kinds of thoughts, and behind these thoughts comes a whole series of emotional experiences. A large steady stream of hateful and vengeful thoughts being released should cause you to look for the beliefs from which they gain their power.

Here he gives an example: if there is a large, steadily released stream of thoughts full of hate and vengefulness, you should be led to look for the beliefs that give them their power -- you need to find what beliefs give these hateful and vengeful thoughts and emotions their power.

You cannot, however, find those beliefs by ignoring the fact that thoughts effectively cause your experience, and sweeping the thoughts under a rug of superficial optimism.

What this sentence means is: you cannot ignore this fact -- the fact that your thoughts effectively cause your experience. In other words, your thoughts cause your emotions, your thoughts bring about your experiences, this is a fact. You cannot ignore this fact, or sweep all your thoughts under a rug of superficial optimism -- you cannot find that belief through either of these two approaches.

You cannot whitewash the situation. You cannot say, "On the surface I am a positive and optimistic person, I am a positive person, I am a responsible person, so my thoughts are relatively positive," and not dare to dig deep into your real beliefs. When we tell many people to go dig into their beliefs, they say, "I don't have any negative beliefs, my beliefs are all normal, I am a very upright person" -- this is superficial optimism. Seth says:

This habitual kind of unpleasant thought will bring about the same kind of physical experience.

And this habitual unpleasantness will bring about the same unpleasant experiences. What you examine, however, is your own belief system, and not why those experiences are unhappy -- you need to turn it around and look for what caused these unhappy experiences, what kind of beliefs brought them about.

Negative Emotions Are Also Natural Healing Tools

The negative subjective and objective events you encounter are all meant to prompt you to examine the contents of the conscious mind.

What you encounter are the things you meet in your ordinary daily life, the subjective and objective events that you feel are negative. Subjective means you yourself feel that this matter is negative; objective means something happened, and you feel it is negative. Whether it is negative emotions you feel or negative events, at this time you should examine the contents of your conscious mind, and the contents of the conscious mind are your belief system.

Those thoughts filled with hatred and vengefulness are also natural healing tools, in their own way.

This way he cannot explain clearly, but you just need to know it. The so-called thoughts of hatred and vengefulness are themselves also healing tools -- do not think that this hatred and vengefulness are bad; they themselves are also healing tools.

If you follow them, accepting them as a natural part of the emotions, they will automatically lead you beyond themselves and become other emotions.

You follow these emotions of hatred and vengefulness, accepting them as a natural part of the emotions; this kind of emotion is simply one component of natural emotions. Just as you have times of joy, happiness, and blessedness, you also have this kind of angry, vengeful thinking and emotions of hatred. You follow this kind of emotion and go along with it, and it will automatically carry you beyond themselves, entering into the next kind of emotion. As he said earlier, one emotion will inevitably lead into another emotion. As long as you do not get stuck in this place, do not grab hold of it and refuse to let go, it will naturally flow away. Just as cloudy days will always pass and the sun will always come out on clear days, it is the same; it is natural and spontaneous, and it will inevitably bring about another emotion. You just need to leave it alone.

Bringing you from hatred into what appears to be the quicksand of fear, which always hides behind hatred.

The reason you hate is because there is fear behind it; only when you have fear will you have hatred. The quicksand of fear is the key; it will bring you into that root source.

Follow Your Feelings

Seth says something very important here -- follow your feelings.

Follow your feelings, and unify your emotional, mental, and physical states.

There was a song before this -- a long time ago Su Rui sang a song called "Follow Your Feelings"⁵. Follow your feelings, and unify your emotional, mental, and physical states -- bring your various emotions, thoughts, and body, these three things, together as one.

When you try to fight or deny your feelings, you separate yourself from your own true being.

When you do not acknowledge the feeling of the present moment -- when you truly hate someone but you dare not admit that you hate him, and you suppress that hatred; when you want to take revenge on certain people but you tell yourself not to do it, and you suppress yourself -- what you suppress actually separates you from your own true being. That is no longer the real you.

Handle your thoughts and emotions the way I just taught you. What way? Many of you have forgotten -- just follow your feelings, go along with them. Whatever emotion comes, feel that emotion, as long as you do not think that the emotion is you. You have to acknowledge that an emotion is just an emotion -- it is your emotion of the present moment, and it is truly what you are feeling right now, so feel it. Because this period of time is for you to feel this emotion, so just feel it. Do not force yourself to say, I do not want this emotion, this emotion is no good, too dark, too negative -- this emotion of hating someone or wanting revenge on certain people, that is not right. Just let it flow naturally. It is perfectly normal.

When you handle your thoughts and emotions in this way, at least you are firmly grounded in the integrity of present experience, and you allow experience to flow naturally toward a therapeutic resolution.

What is a therapeutic resolution? It will resolve itself for you naturally, and it will heal you naturally. In their own way -- when this emotion comes out, it is meant to heal you. Let the emotion flow through your body. As Seth said before, letting this kind of emotion flow through your body has a healing effect on you in itself.

Let me give a simple example: a girl breaks up with her boyfriend, and the boyfriend did something that wronged her. Would you say that at this moment she really hates this man? Does she want revenge on him? And then at this point you go and tell her, do not hate him, do not take revenge on him, love him, you should do this and that -- a kind of chicken-soup-for-the-soul lecture starts pouring into her: you should want the best for him; since you truly love him, you should give him freedom and let him do his own thing.

But in this present moment, this girl really hates that man. She hates this scumbag, and she wishes she could cut him into a thousand pieces. Many women say, I could kill you -- it is not a joke; in her heart she really wants to kill you. At that moment she really does want to kill you. This is a normal emotional expression for a woman, so just let her express it. Just let the emotion flow.

But many people are pressured by society and all kinds of external environmental influences, which tell her not to have this emotion. How could I be like this? How could I do this kind of thing? I am a highly educated person, I am a well-mannered and reasonable person, how could I do this kind of -- how could I even have this kind of emotion? But you do not know that this emotion is actually a very good healing for you in the present moment. Just let it flow. If you hate him, hate him. If you want revenge, want revenge. It is perfectly normal.

When you reject these emotions and say, I do not want this emotion; or when you feel fear toward them and say, how could I have such thoughts, how terrifying -- you block the continuous flow of emotion.

What do you clearly want to do? For example, your boyfriend got together with another woman, and you clearly want to break them up. You want to tell that woman that this man is a scumbag. You even want to take revenge on this man and expose him to the whole world. Just like what Luo Zhixiang's girlfriend Zhou Yangqing did the other day⁶ -- it was revenge, just revenge, openly revenge. Just express it, let it flow. It is perfectly normal. Once it has flowed through, it passes.

If you do not let it flow, if you block its flow, you build a dam. Any emotion, if you honestly experience it, will turn into another one -- one emotion will lead into another, and it will flow naturally. If you do not block it, it flows away like water and passes. If you insist on building a dam to hold it back, this emotion will accumulate more and more, grow more and more, and finally the dam bursts -- you collapse. It is that simple.

You block the natural flow of your entire system.

Emotions need to flow naturally. Your body and mind as a whole system -- as was said at the beginning of this session, your body and mind are an integrated system -- you block the natural flow of emotion within it.

Face the fear, and it will dissolve on its own

When you face the fear, and feel the changes it causes in your body, as well as the thoughts that travel with it, the fear will automatically dissolve.

When you dare to truly face the fear, feel the changes it causes in your body. What changes? Being afraid, right? Your body trembles, your legs go weak, the hairs stand up. Feel it. Feel this fear. How interesting. And the thoughts that travel with it -- why the fear? What are you afraid of? What causes your own fear? Where does the root of this thought come from? What belief leads to your fear? Which belief does the emotion of fear come from? When you observe it, when you think about it this way, your fear will automatically dissolve.

If you are afraid of this fear, if you are afraid of the emotion of fear itself, then you do not want to touch it, you avoid it -- that means you have not experienced it as it is, you have not truly experienced it, so it will not leave. It will always be there. It is as if you have built a dam for it, and you have not let it flow naturally. What you were supposed to experience, you did not experience, so the next emotion will not come, and you will remain blocked in this emotion. Maybe after the fear passes, there would be an emotion of relaxation, but if you are blocked here, the emotion of fear can never pass, so you just keep being afraid.

Behind this obstacle, the conscious belief system is illuminated.

Once you discover this obstacle, the belief system behind it can be seen by you, and you will know what caused this obstruction.

And you will realize that the reason you have that feeling is that you believe a concept, and this concept leads to such a reaction and rationalizes it.

The reason you have your present reaction is that you deeply believe a concept, a certain concept, and you believe it without doubt. Once you discover this problem, you will find that all your reactions were originally caused by this concept, and then you will even make up a bunch of rationalized reasons for it -- this is your belief system at work. What you need to dig out is to find this concept. What exactly is this concept of your fear?

Putting on Biological Armor

If you habitually deny the expression of any emotion, to that extent you become alienated not only from your body, but also from your conscious thoughts.

If you have already made denying emotional expression into a habit, then you become alienated not only from your body, but also from your conscious thoughts.

You will bury certain thoughts, and put on biological armor to prevent yourself from actually feeling their effects upon the body.

You put on biological armor to prevent the emotions brought by such thoughts from affecting you.

In each case, the answer always lies within your personal belief system, and within those concepts you hold deep in your heart, from which the initial repression arose in the first place.

When you carefully observe every example in your life, the answer always lies within your personal belief system. Those intense concepts you hold deep within yourself, the initial repression you felt, the initial repression arose from these intense concepts. You suppressed them, buried them, but they still continue to have an effect—you did not face them squarely, did not let them flow.

If you find yourself in a mental frenzy, dashing about aimlessly, trying to suppress every negative thought that enters your mind, then ask yourself why you so believe that your slightest negative thought has such enormous destructive power?

When a person has already entered a state of mental frenzy, desperately trying to block any negative emotion in the mind, then where does the belief behind that lie? It lies in believing that such a tiny negative emotion, even a very, very small negative thought, will lead to enormous destructive power. Why do you believe that this thing will necessarily bring about such enormous destructive power?

And hating someone does not necessarily mean you have to go kill them. Perhaps after a period of time, once you let it flow away, you cannot even summon the hatred anymore, and you have forgotten who they were. You say you will not forget, but if you think carefully, is that really true? Of all the people you once hated in your past life, how many can you still remember now? Of course there are some you still remember, but are there some you may have already forgotten? It is that simple. If you truly hated him, then you will truly forget him.

Body and Mind Together Form a Self-Evolving System

Body and mind together do indeed display a unified, self-regulating, healing, self-evolving system.

This is what we talked about before in the user manual and the robot instruction booklet: when you align with your inner self, what it means is that body and mind are together. What body and mind being together means is that you and your inner self have already aligned, reaching a state of harmony and consistency, or what we might call a state of oneness, that is, the unity of body and mind. That then displays a unified, self-regulating, healing, self-evolving system, and this system itself is healing, self-regulating, and self-evolving.

A problem, if honestly faced, contains its own solution.

As long as you face the problem, the answer is right there within it. Actually, every one of us already knows this answer. As long as you go and face it, you will discover, hey, isn't the answer right here? So simple and clear.

Every symptom, mental or physical, is a clue to the conflict behind it, and within it lies the seed of its own healing.

Every symptom, whether mental or physical, is a clue given to you for ultimately resolving this conflict. Do not be afraid to face these mental or physical symptoms; you need to face them. When you face them, they will naturally give you the clues to the solution. The more directly you look at them, the clearer those clues will become, and they will naturally emerge. And not only are there clues, there is also the seed of how to heal it. Just follow along with that, and you will automatically heal yourself.

Natural Aggressiveness

Seth continued:

It is true that habitual thoughts of love, optimism, and self-acceptance are better for you than thoughts of the opposite kind.

This is correct—indeed, maintaining habitual thoughts of love, optimism, and self-acceptance is better than thoughts of non-acceptance of yourself, perpetual pessimism, or a heart full of hatred.

But your beliefs about yourself automatically attract thoughts that are consistent with your ideas. There is as much natural aggressiveness in love as there is in hate, and hate is a distortion of such a normal force, a result of your beliefs.

Just like the material Ruburt received before, natural aggressiveness can purify and is highly creative; it is the driving force behind all emotions. You must remember that natural aggressiveness, whether of love or of hate, is always capable of purifying, and it is creative—highly creative. What can it purify? The impetus behind all emotions. It is itself a driving force, itself has a purifying function, and itself has creative ability—these are the main attributes of natural aggressiveness.

Methods to Examine the Contents of the Conscious Mind

Here Seth gives us two methods for examining our conscious beliefs.

There are two ways to help you understand your conscious beliefs. The most direct way is to have a series of talks with yourself.

Talk with yourself, write down your beliefs in various areas, take a piece of paper and a pen, and talk with yourself as you write.

And you will find that you believe different things at different times.

Many of our belief systems or beliefs are not wrong; they are simply outdated -- there is no right or wrong, they are just outdated. For example, some beliefs you held firmly as a child no longer need to be held once you grow up. The beliefs you held when you broke up with your ex-boyfriend became outdated once the breakup was over. At that time you could hate all men, you could say there is not a single good man in the world, and that was even healing for you. But once that belief has passed, it has passed. You cannot still hold that belief when you begin your next relationship -- how could you even begin the next relationship then? That is what it means.

You will often have different beliefs; write them down, and you will often see obvious contradictions -- some beliefs are contradictory, and that is normal.

These represent opposing beliefs that regulate your emotions, physical condition, and physical experience.

You will discover some opposing beliefs; you need to find them and bring them into alignment. You cannot believe that there is not a single good man in the world while also longing for a very happy life with a partner. You cannot on the one hand crave love and on the other imagine that no man is any good -- these are two completely opposite beliefs. So how do you adjust them? You have to adjust them yourself.

Examine these contradictions, and the invisible beliefs will emerge. They unify those seemingly different states of mind.

As you examine them, those hidden, invisible beliefs will emerge on their own. The so-called invisible beliefs are those you are fully aware of but would rather ignore -- because they represent certain areas of conflict that you do not want to deal with yet. In other words, those places in your mind where two little people are fighting, you do not dare to face these conflicts, you do not dare to confront them directly. For example, the question of whether this world is good or evil -- you do not dare to wrestle with it, so you set it aside. The same applies to other areas.

Once you decide to examine the entire contents of the conscious mind, they can be reached.

If you do a comprehensive review of your entire belief system and all the conscious contents in your conscious mind, you will discover those beliefs that you have hidden, that you clearly know but pretend not to see -- you need to examine them all.

Another Approach: Emotional Retracing

If this method is too rational for you, then you can also retrace your way back through your emotions to find the beliefs.

If you feel that this rational method of reasoning does not suit you very well -- that is, I take out a pen and paper and directly analyze my entire belief system, summarizing and sorting them out, which belief is the core belief of another belief, and which belief is a branch of another belief -- if you can draw your beliefs like a big tree, in a tree-like structure, then you will see very clearly that they must be consistent, that they must all start from one root, and that their core beliefs must be unified and consistent. You cannot have two completely opposite beliefs, such as whether this world is fundamentally good or evil -- those are two opposite root beliefs.

So when it comes to this belief system, if you have this kind of rational analytical ability, then summarize it. You can start from the smaller beliefs and work your way back little by little, and eventually you will find its core belief, and then you will also find those beliefs you once overlooked and never saw, and you will dig them all out and lay them out in the sunlight.

But if this method is too difficult for you, you can adopt an emotional approach, using emotional retracing to find your beliefs.

Whichever method you use, one will lead you to the other.

Whether you use the approach that begins with emotion, or the rational analysis approach just mentioned, it will definitely lead you from one method to the other. These two methods weave back and forth between each other; that is fine, and you may end up using both.

Both of these methods require you to be honest with yourself.

You must be honest -- this is the most crucial point.

And to make a very real contact with the mental, psychic, and emotional aspects of your present reality.

Make a very real contact with yourself, whether on the psychic, emotional, or mental level. Do you actually like this person or not? Do you actually love him or not? To put it more bluntly, do you love his beauty or do you love him as a person? Do you love the temperament he carries, or do you love the aura around him? Do you love him because he is rich, or because he is truly humorous? What exactly is it that you love about him -- that is on your emotional side. On the mental level it is the same: what exactly is your belief system? On the psychic level it is also the same: what kind of spiritual understanding do you actually have, what are your own goals and pursuits, what requirements do you have for your soulmate, and so on -- all of these must be faced truthfully.

Just like Angela discussed in the last session, you must accept your emotions as they truly are.

You must understand and realize that emotions are related to a certain issue or situation, but they are not a statement of fact about reality.

Your emotions are triggered by their connection to a certain issue at the time; they are not a statement of fact about your actual life. He gives an example: I feel that I am a terrible mother, or I feel that I am a failure -- these are emotional statements, and you should feel them as they truly are, but do not treat them as facts. This is the key.

If you truly feel that you are terrible, that you are a failure, then feel that feeling as it truly is, but do not treat it as a fact, and do not actually treat yourself as a failure. You can feel the feeling of being a failure, but do not identify it as the fact that you really are a failure -- these are two different concepts. Feeling this feeling is completely normal, and you should feel it so that the emotion can flow on its own. You cannot say that you clearly feel like a failure and then still pump yourself up with motivational platitudes, telling yourself that you are not a failure and that you are a successful person -- that is wrong. Acknowledge the feeling.

You must understand that although emotions have their value as emotions, they are not necessarily statements of fact.

This emotion or feeling itself has its own value, and its value lies in its healing function; in your present state, it has a healing and therapeutic effect on you. In itself, it is also a flowing, normal expression and release of energy. At the same time, this emotion is also the driving force behind all your actions -- emotion is the source of all motivation, and you must learn to use the power within it and allow it to flow freely.

You may be a very good mother and yet feel that you are not doing well enough -- this is completely normal. You may perform very well in some areas, but feel that you are not doing well enough in others. You may be very successful in achieving your goals; a goal-oriented person may be very successful in this regard, and yet still feel like a failure -- this is very common in the workplace. Many people complete all their targets, all their KPIs, all their sales tasks, and yet they still feel like failures, believing that they have not found the meaning and value of life -- this is completely normal. Or they may feel that they are failures in other areas, such as emotionally -- busy with work every day, yet neglecting family and neglecting emotional connections -- all of this is possible.

Emotions Will Lead You to the Beliefs

By recognizing these distinctions and honestly following your feelings from beginning to end, you will be led to the beliefs behind them.

Whatever emotion comes, experience that emotion. Be angry when it is time to be angry, be happy when it is time to be happy, and follow that feeling. In other words, if you follow these emotions, they will lead you to the beliefs behind those emotions.

This will inevitably lead to a series of self-discoveries, each of which will guide you into further creative psychological activity.

It will naturally lead to self-discovery. You discover beliefs you had not noticed before, and suddenly they are so plainly evident before you. Each discovery will guide you into further creative psychological activity.

At each stage, you will come closer than ever before to the reality of experience.

At each stage, you will come closer than ever before to the reality of experience -- that is, the essence of this experience, the real experience and the real feeling. Each time you will feel that actual experience more truly.

When the conscious mind becomes more and more aware of its own influence on the course of events, you will benefit greatly.

When your own conscious mind discovers that your influence on events depends on your belief system, and that your belief system has a decisive influence on how events unfold, you will realize how important your conscious mind is, and how powerful your belief system is. In real life it can completely change my feelings and experiences.

It will no longer fear the emotions or the body, treating them as threatening and unpredictable.

We often treat emotions as threatening, or treat the body as unpredictable -- not knowing when it will get sick, not knowing when bad luck will strike, which disease you will get, when cancer will come for you, living in that kind of dread every day. When you recognize the beliefs behind this, you will not have this problem. If you have normal beliefs and let emotions flow naturally, you will not get sick, and you will trust your body more.

When you truly know how emotions come about, you will know that emotions are actually caused by the beliefs behind them, and you will no longer fear that these emotions will become uncontrollable. The power of emotion is unstoppable? No, because you know that behind it there is a strong belief guiding it, and that belief is something you can change -- so your emotions are also controllable, rather than making you feel that emotions are completely uncontrollable. When an emotion comes, there is nothing you can do, like many women say: I fell in love with this person, and even though everyone knows he is no good, I still cannot help it, because I fell in love with him. What can I say, I just cannot control myself, or I cannot stop myself from loving him, and so on. She treats this emotion as a flood or a wild beast -- clearly he is a scumbag, the whole world knows he is a scumbag, yet she blinds herself and says I just love him, because this is my emotion, I cannot change it, I just love him. In the middle of this there is a very deep belief system causing it. As long as you dare to dig, you can dig out the reason.

Emotions Do Not Need to Compete for Favor

When you dig down to this cause, you will feel yourself entering into a greater unity. That is, you know where your emotions come from, you know how external events happen, and that they all follow from your conscious belief system. This is the core and the key of the matter.

When you are unified with your inner belief system in this way, then you are highly unified with your external environment and your body, and you will not have any suffering at all. Even your emotions are unified with you as well.

Seth says something here that is extremely spiritual. Emotions will no longer feel like a child who has come to beg, or a child who was thrown in as a freebie with a phone plan -- as if only the one who is dressed up the most properly will be accepted by others. Emotions should not feel that only the good emotions, the loving emotions, the positive emotions can be accepted by their own master. It is like some children who feel, I am just someone else's child, I am not their biological child, and only if I behave very well will others accept me -- he is using emotions as an example here, meaning that you do not dare to express those bad emotions.

What he means is that all of your emotions, whether good or bad, are your own biological children, your own biological sons and daughters. Do not worry about whether they are good or bad. Just like your own children, it is impossible for every child to be a good child. You have to admit that among your children there are times when they do not behave well, and that is normal. In the same way, your emotions have their grand, glorious, and upright moments, and they also have their dark, petty, jealous, humble, and fragile moments -- all kinds of dark moments will occur, and these are all part of your natural emotions.

So this passage from Seth is particularly interesting: it is not that you have to dress up an emotion beautifully before it can be accepted by yourself. Whatever kind of emotion it is, you have to accept it.

They do not need to fight for the right to express themselves.

Emotions do not need to compete for favor. Because they will be fully accepted as members of this family of the self. All emotions, whether good or bad, must be accepted as members of this family of the self. You are this home.

Too Emotional? You Are Actually Afraid

Seth says, some people nowadays will say they are too emotional, too sensitive, too easily swayed -- actually in this situation, you are afraid of your emotions.

Because you feel that once emotions arise, you are completely out of control, things are entirely without rational operation, completely led by the nose by emotions. You completely ignore, or do not dare to confirm, that your emotions are indeed caused by your belief system. It is not that emotions lead you by the nose; it is that you can lead emotions by the nose. But you do not think so. You are afraid of emotions precisely because you fear they are completely uncontrollable, that before emotions you can only raise your hands in surrender. This is the crux of the matter.

When you realize that your emotions are determined by your belief system, what is there to be afraid of?

You think their power is so strong that they can drown out all rationality.

This is very normal; everyone is like this.

No matter how open you may seem, you will always accept those emotions you consider safe.

You think you are very open, an open-minded person, but emotionally, you will only accept those emotions you consider safe. Those unsafe emotions, you just ignore them, suppress them, push them away, refuse to see them, or stop them at a certain point -- let them develop to a certain degree and then quickly stop them, do not let them develop any further.

What this is saying is: some people seem very open, but actually what are they doing? They are avoiding. They are accepting only the emotions they can control, the emotions they can hold. Some people practice cultivation very well, but fundamentally they are living among emotions they have screened themselves -- all those other emotions they have blocked out, they do not even dare to face. Because you do not dare to follow those emotions, you terminate them at certain points. Of course this behavior follows your beliefs. If you think this way, you will walk this way, you will accept the emotions you consider safe, and ignore the others.

Many real-life examples are like this. For instance, many spiritual practitioners can only accept some of their positive emotions and thoughts; those negative emotions and thoughts they completely do not accept. They feel that either they have been tempted by the devil, or they are in an uncontrollable state, and they must quickly correct this, rectify it. Through various means -- meditation, sitting practice, chanting sutras, reciting mantras -- they completely suppress those negative emotions, like floods and wild beasts, not even daring to look at them. How could those be my own thoughts? How could those be my own emotions? How could those be my own ideas? Cannot have them, cannot have them, must chant a few Buddha names and mantras, blame oneself -- not daring to face the real self. This is a typical example.

In life and in relationships, it is the same. In other words, what we humans are best at is only accepting those emotions and feelings that make us feel very comfortable; as soon as we feel even a little uncomfortable emotion or feeling, we do our utmost to avoid it, suppress it, dodge it.

Why Would a Forty-Year-Old Try to Act Young?

Seth now begins to give an example.

For example, if you are already in your forties, you may tell yourself that age is meaningless.

Whether male or female, you may tell yourself that age is meaningless. Age does not determine anything. I do not care about age at all, I do not care about age in the least. Then you will like spending time with young people, getting along well with young people, and all the friends around you are in their twenties or thirties. Your thinking is very young and very active, and you are interested in the things young people play with, scrolling through Douyin, watching the latest TV dramas — watching Shaonian You or Yicun Guangyin, or watching Eternal Love or something like that⁷. You feel that you are very young, because you watch the same things young people watch. You only accept those emotions that seem to fit your idea of youth — you can accept all the emotions related to youth. You become very concerned about the topics young people are now concerned about, and you accept the ideas that you consider optimistic and that give you health, and perhaps you consider yourself to be quite emotional.

Then Seth says, however, beneath these ideas — everything he described above is what a person in his forties ordinarily does. He says:

You know very well, and you should know, the actual physical condition of your own body, yet you resolutely ignore your outward appearance.

You know what your actual physical condition is like. No matter how much a person in his forties tries to act young, you are not the same as a person in his twenties. You just resolutely ignore it, I will not look, I will not admit it. You ignore it, just as if you could not see any of the changes since you were thirty, you ignore it, I did not see it, I have not changed, and in your heart you keep identifying yourself as the way you were at thirty.

When you do this:

You fail to see your value within the time and space you are in.

You fail to see where your meaning lies. It is like what is often said online, when some people who have been through it say to young people: What is there to be proud of in being young? We have all been young, but have you ever been old? These words are very fitting here. In other words, when you are thirty, enjoy the life of a thirty-year-old, and when you are forty, enjoy the life of a forty-year-old. You cannot, when you are forty, still cling to the tail end of being twenty or thirty and say, I still want to experience the life of a twenty-year-old or a thirty-year-old. When you were twenty or thirty, you should have properly experienced the life of that age, and now that you have reached forty, you should experience the life of a forty-year-old. You cannot deny that physically you are already different from a twenty-year-old, and you cannot close your eyes and deceive yourself, denying its existence.

Then you will suppress any thoughts of death and old age, blocking out very natural feelings.

Because you do not want to hear these things, you suppress them, you cannot talk about them, you cannot mention them. A normal person — like the changing of the seasons, the succession of living things, natural aging — but you block it out again.

And those feelings were meant to lead you across the years of your early life.

Those feelings were meant to let you cross over it, to lead you across the years of your early life. You are denying the physical existence of the body, you are denying the changes of the body, you are denying the extra flesh on your body, the changes in your figure, the loosening of your skin. As a man, your ability in bed is no longer as mighty as it was at twenty — these are all real, and you are denying them. You are denying this normal, natural change, and the focus of different age periods.

Twenty has the focus of twenty, thirty has the focus of thirty, and now at forty you have the focus of forty. Yet you cling desperately to the focus of twenty and deceive yourself, not experiencing the natural flow of the physical, the psychic, and the spiritual — and that flow was meant to carry you beyond themselves.

To put it more bluntly, what does this mean? It means that within your belief system, you think that being in your twenties is the best state, and you do not believe that as you grow older at thirty or forty your state will get better and better. You believe your state is getting worse and worse, and that your twenties were the peak of your life — I am referring to the physical aspect. This is a typical example.

This is the belief hidden deepest within you, the one behind everything that you dare not dig out, dare not touch. That is your core belief, and you hold it so firmly: your body now is certainly not as good as it was at twenty, therefore your state now is certainly not as good as it was at twenty. You equate this physical change with the change of you as a person, and you fix the focus of the years only on this one point, the body, and then use that to deny everything else about yourself.

So in your actual life, like the examples he gave in the first paragraph — you spend time with young people, you try to act young, you watch the TV dramas young people watch and listen to the songs they listen to — you feel as though you are in a very good state, a very youthful state. Many people say, I am doing great this way, what is wrong with it? What are you doing? You are trying to act young. We often say an old cucumber brushed with green paint — you are trying to act young. You have lost the flavor you should have at forty, the mature presence you should have, the wisdom of your life, your mature view of the world. You are still like an angry young man, ranting at this and that every day, holding forth on international affairs, doing this every day — these are all things you should have done when you were young. When you are forty and still maintain this kind of state, you think how wonderful it is, I am full of vigor, full of passion, forever young. Do you dare face your real thoughts?

You say you are forever young, all right then, compare yourself with yourself at twenty — you do not need to compare with anyone else, just compare with yourself. Try it. When you were twenty, how many times could you do it in one night with your girlfriend? How many times can you do it now? When you were twenty you could do it six or seven times in one night, now you cannot do it once in six or seven days — that is a fact. Can you dare not face yourself? And for women it is the same. You say I am the same as I was at twenty, then when no one is around, take off your clothes and look at yourself in the mirror. Your face is well maintained, your skin can be well cared for, you do beauty treatments and moisturizing every day, but what about your body? What about your skin? Is the texture of your entire skin the same as it was at twenty?

Why must you deny that who you are now is your best state, and insist that who you were at twenty was your best state? Why must you insist that being able to do it seven times in one night is a better state, while once every six or seven days is a bad state? Why must you define a physical ability you no longer have as the highest realm of your life, and then not even dare admit it, not even dare admit that you are using the physical body to represent your personal development? So you hide this belief, and you hide it very deeply, and then you try to act young in all kinds of ways, using the pretense of youth to cover yourself up — this is a problem many people face.

You might say, this Seth, oh, this old man is too harsh, he often digs deep into your underlying beliefs, digging until there is nothing left. If you think carefully, he speaks rather politely, he does not say it so harshly. But when I speak — because I am interpreting, I will certainly bring out his meaning, so it may sound harsher. That is the idea.

Seth says, this is originally a natural process of flow. It will carry you beyond the you of different ages, beyond the you of your younger years, allowing you to achieve a full development and transcendence. You are developing, and you cannot remain stuck at the you of that time. The word he uses — transcend — do you not understand what it means? To go beyond yourself, to go beyond themselves. Right now you have not gone beyond it. You have stuck yourself at twenty, you always want to keep yourself at twenty, you have stuck yourself there. You do not dare go beyond it, and why do you not dare go beyond it? Because of the belief mentioned earlier, you do not dare. You want to cling to it desperately, and even though it is clearly gone, you still pretend to have it, and you still disguise yourself as that.

Believing in Youth, Fearing Old Age

From the discussion above, the connotations we have given to the words "old" or "older" raise a question.

When we say a person is old or older, the connotations themselves raise a question.

In your culture, you believe that youth is flexible, alert, and vigilant, while old age is generally considered a disgrace, rigid, out of step with the times, and withered. If you struggle desperately to remain young, this is usually to hide your own beliefs about old age, and the emotions connected with them.

The belief in our current society is exactly this: youth is good, old age is bad. If you struggle desperately to remain young, this is usually to hide your own beliefs about old age, and the emotions caused by those beliefs -- you are hiding them.

Whenever you refuse to accept the actual physical condition, you are equally refusing the psychological level.

When you refuse this physical-level self, you refuse the psychological-level self.

The body exists in the world of space and time, and the experiences you may encounter at sixty are just as necessary, or just as important, as those you encounter in your twenties. Your changing image is meant to tell you certain things.

Your body gradually growing old, this natural law, is meant to tell you something. When you pretend that change is not happening -- you see, when you pretend that change is not happening, you are blocking physiological and spiritual information.

To put it simply, what this passage means is that every day you experience at sixty -- whether it is physical change, physiological change, or change in mood, emotion, or psyche -- is just as important as the things you experience at twenty. You cannot say that what you experience at sixty is unimportant, and only what you experience in your twenties is important; that at sixty you are already retired, already just waiting to die, that the main things in your life have already been experienced, that your best years are already gone -- if you think that way, then the next several decades of your life really will be wasted.

The things you experience at sixty, the people you meet at sixty, the true love you meet at sixty, may be emotionally deeper than the true love you met at twenty. Because by then you have already transcended the most basic, primal physical needs, and what you have at that point is more truly spiritual and emotional exchange, unlike young people in their twenties who fall madly in love the moment they meet, without even knowing why they love -- whether it is hormones at work or something else, they do not know. That is the state one should have at twenty, and that is normal.

But if you insist on having a sixty-year-old mentality at twenty, only talking about emotions and not sex, engaging in a Platonic emotional exchange⁸, then are you not sick? Go try it, ask anyone at twenty who would be willing to have that kind of romance with you. When you reach sixty -- sixty may be a bit early -- when you reach eighty, you only have Platonic love left, you have nothing else, and even if you did not want to talk about Platonic love, you could not avoid it. So at twenty you cannot experience what Platonic love is, but at eighty you experience what Platonic love is every single day. It is that simple.

This is the information that your natural age, nature, or age itself should tell you, whether it is physical or spiritual information. But you block it, you do not want it, and you insist on remaining in the state of a twenty-year-old.

You know there are many people doing this kind of thing nowadays. Cosmetic procedures are only one aspect. I know many doctors -- because some men are injecting male hormones, implanting them in the body, in the abdominal cavity or in the muscles. It is a slow-release agent that can be released over a period of one year or a year and a half, allowing the man to maintain his former vigor undiminished, achieved through this method. Many women also implant a kind of female hormone to stimulate themselves, so that they keep having periods, never go through menopause, and never experience the state of menopause at fifty, and in this way they can keep their skin in very good condition.

Seth is speaking precisely to this kind of person. In real life you can all see such people. They use all kinds of methods -- injecting human stem cells, stem cell injections, and so on -- what are they doing? They are afraid of growing old. They do not acknowledge the value and meaning of old age, and they do not acknowledge the existence of these natural values and meanings in life. So the examples Seth gives really cut to the bone.

The Meaning of Old Age: Preparing for New Life

In old age, the organism is preparing for a new birth. The events that occur in the totality of body, mind, and spirit involve not only the passing of one season, but also preparation for the beginning of another season.

When you are old, you are preparing for a new life. The events that occur in the totality of body, mind, and spirit do not just mean that one season is about to pass; they also involve preparation for the beginning of another season. This situation includes all the support you need to get through the difficult transition.

Not only an attitude of acceptance is needed, but also an aggressive drive toward new experience.

That is to say, you not only need an attitude of acceptance like "I accept my fate, I am old now, I am simply aging along with the natural passage of years" — you also need the aggressive drive, the excitement, of beginning a new life experience. You will think, my life at this age may be nearly over, but I am about to begin a new life, a new life is about to unfold — what a great temptation such a brand-new life holds for you. So this aggressiveness must prepare for the new life.

Therefore, rejecting your reality in time will result in your getting stuck in time and becoming obsessed with it.

If you reject the effects that time's changes have on you, then you are getting stuck in your own time and becoming obsessed with it.

Accept the complete self that you are in each moment of time.

You must accept the you at twenty, accept the you at thirty, just as you accept the you at eighty — accept yourself.

Allow the body to function until its natural end, in good condition, unhampered by distorted and invisible concepts about age.

You must allow your body to function naturally, all the way until its natural end. Do not be limited by distorted concepts about age — that when you are old you cannot hear, that your eyesight fails — do not impose these beliefs on yourself. But you must accept the natural process of change.

If you believe that youth is your ideal and strive desperately to preserve it, while at the same time believing that old age necessarily brings some kind of deterioration, then you bring about an unnecessary dilemma, and according to the negative thoughts in your mind, you will age more quickly.

Seth's words here are absolutely penetrating — the more afraid of aging a person is, the faster they age. Because in your heart you believe that aging is bad; you firmly believe this, and that is why you are afraid, why you try to maintain a youthful state. Your fear is your core belief, so this is what you will actually manifest, and it will accelerate aging.

In real life you will also see many examples of this reality. You will find that people who start using beauty products very early to keep themselves young may appear very young on the surface, but after they reach a certain age — say, after their fifties — they will suddenly age, and the speed of that aging is simply unstoppable. Before fifty, she may maintain the state of a thirty-year-old — her mental outlook, her complexion, and even her figure, which can be achieved through exercise — but in her later years she ages extremely fast. This includes many famous actresses who, in their sixties or late fifties, can still play the roles of young girls, but no matter how much she conceals it, once she reaches a certain age range, she will suddenly age, and age very quickly. I will not give specific examples here; everyone probably knows who I am talking about.

Two Approaches: Rational or Emotional, You Can Start from Either

Everyone must examine their own personal beliefs, or begin with the emotions that inevitably lead to those beliefs.

We all need to examine our own personal beliefs. You either examine your beliefs, or you start by examining your own feelings and emotions. If you are a rational person, start by examining your beliefs; if you are an emotional person, start by examining your own emotions. No matter how you examine them, one will lead to the other, and the other will lead back to this one.

As in other areas, those of you who are skilled with words may find it helpful to write down the beliefs you discover, or to list your rational and emotional assumptions, and you may find that they are quite different.

You will discover many opposing beliefs, or beliefs that are completely opposed to one another.

If you have a physical condition, do not avoid it. Feel its reality in your body, and then let the emotions follow freely.

If you are physically uncomfortable, just let yourself feel that discomfort. While you are feeling the discomfort, the emotions will naturally follow along.

If you let them flow, they will lead you to the belief that caused the problem.

Let these emotions flow, and they will lead you to the belief that caused the problem.

They will lead you past many facets of reality that you must face and explore.

In other words, your illness is meant to let you experience this kind of emotion, to use this emotion to lead you to places you normally cannot see. This is perfectly normal. If you did not have this illness, you would not see those things.

These methods release the natural aggressiveness that you had originally suppressed.

This method is this: whether you rationally list your belief system, or trace the source of your beliefs through the emotional approach, or if your body is ill and you follow the feeling of your illness, following the emotions it brings out, it will release the natural aggressiveness that you originally had but had suppressed. This aggressiveness was always there, but you suppressed it. What does "suppressed" mean? It means many emotions that should have been expressed were not expressed. Because you thought the belief was bad, you did not dare express this emotion, and that emotion was not fully expressed, so naturally the aggressiveness was not released. That is where the problem lies.

As you follow the emotions brought by your physical discomfort, just go along with them, vent your dissatisfaction and emotions, release that aggressiveness, and your illness will naturally get better.

You may feel overwhelmed by emotion, but trust it.

You must trust your emotions. Once again, your emotions are the natural flow of your existence. Your emotions are the natural flow of your existence as a person, or as a soul, or whatever you call it. This is the most natural thing there is. Your emotions will awaken your creativity, and if you follow them, you will find the answer to the problem.

Why not let them flow? Why not let your emotions express themselves freely? Just let them go, follow them. Follow your feelings, hold tight to the hand of your dreams. I remember Su Rui sang that song back then. Now when we think about it, how spiritual that song is. Follow your feelings, hold the hand of your dreams. Just like that, you will find the answer to the problem. Just follow it.

Jane's Poem: "Dialogue Between the Mortal Self and the Immortal Soul"

Seth said that Ruburt had an excellent example in that book of his, in which Ruburt allowed his emotions to rise, even though at first he was a little afraid. Seth said, not everyone can write poetry, not everyone can write poetry the way Ruburt can, but everyone is creative in their own way. You have your own way of being creative, and you can follow your emotions the way Ruburt did, whether or not you produce a poem. For example, Ruburt followed his emotions and wrote a poem. At first he was afraid of that emotion, but he let it carry him along. You might not write a poem; maybe you paint a picture, maybe you make a piece of furniture - anything is possible. Seth said Ruburt knew which poem he would refer to, and you could paste that poem at the back.

You must realize that your consciousness is capable, and that its concepts are pertinent.

Your consciousness's concepts are pertinent. Your own beliefs influence and form your body and your experience - this is the power of your own beliefs. How powerful it is! It can form your body, and it can also form your experience. Your body is formed by your beliefs; your experience, your perceptions, your emotions, your feelings - all of them are brought about by your beliefs. Your beliefs are that important, that powerful. But you have to believe that they are pertinent - this is something you must believe. You have to truly face it: it is pertinent, not as extreme and emotional as you might think.

This poem was written five days earlier, five days before this session. The book is called "Dialogue Between the Mortal Self and the Immortal Soul" - the "mortal self" is the self that must die, and the "immortal soul." Let's take a look at this poem. From this poem you can probably get a sense of Jane's poetic accomplishment and the level of her inspiration. Different people will see different things in it. I'll simply read the poem through once now, and everyone can experience it for themselves. You can also try to figure out how Jane released the emotion she was afraid of, then followed that emotion, and ultimately brought forth a poem like this - isn't this exactly what Seth said, that emotion is the source of your creativity? It is its power source, the driving force of your actions, its energy. So each person should follow their own emotions and face them truthfully.

But now, my body trembles Breathing heavy, ancient grievances Ancient rage, from my toes Rumbling upward, a somber Dense black hole from my belly Rising to my throat, unloading its burden Upon my tongue, my tongue becoming Heavy as lead, carrying things unsaid Things unwept, long since Forgotten by my heart yet in my blood Condensed, unsaid vowels and syllables, bleak statues Images I should have abandoned All pour forth from my lips Details merging together A cold heavy mass Coming alive at birth And wailing, rushing into the universe Shapes and colors of every kind Black and purple mingling with the great Moving pictures of the sky's scenery Lost within it and yet saved And now, I feel you Even within my rage, magnificent and terrible Emerging from my flesh With the justice of storm clouds Ravaging the landscape, yet bringing freshness Making the wreckage fly with full force And releasing new bulbs That had been buried deep below And my rage just happens to lift the bulbs And you and me together Through the frozen plains of repression Surging in a great vortex of freedom Bursting forth like summer thunder and lightning Racing across the fields Raging joyfully

The poem is that short. That last line - "raging joyfully." What he means is, rage emerges from the toes of the physical body, rumbling upward, this ancient rage, this enduring rage, rising all the way up to the tongue, the throat, pouring out from the lips. Those bleak statues, the images he had long since abandoned and no longer wanted, were nevertheless brought up and spoken out by him. All the details merged together, becoming a heavy, cold mass, coming alive at birth, wailing - it was as if it had taken on a life of its own. What he is talking about is anger, this emotion of anger. What is this feeling of anger like? The universe, the sky, blackness, and so on.

But he says, look, the key is in this line - "And now, I feel you." Within this rage, Jane, as a physical being, feels the presence of her soul. She says she feels you, and this "you" refers to the immortal soul. Because the title of this poetry collection is "Dialogue Between the Mortal Self and the Immortal Soul." Even within my rage, I can feel your - the soul's - presence. This soul is magnificent and terrible, emerging from my flesh, like the justice of a violent storm - because it is the soul, after all - it ravaged the landscape, but it brought freshness.

Just like during a violent storm, the landscape is simply unbearable to look at, with no beauty whatsoever, but after it passes, it brings freshness to nature. It made the wreckage fly with full force - it knocked down and destroyed all the storm-tossed branches and leaves of nature, and after making the wreckage fly with full force, new bulbs were revealed, that is, the roots of plants were exposed. These plant roots had been buried deep underground - that is, the source, the source of the rage, the source of the beliefs, all of it was brought out.

And she says "my rage just happens to" - what does the rage just happen to do? It lifts the bulbs and you and me - "you and me" means the soul and this physical body - and also the bulbs, which are the source of the beliefs, lifting them all up together, then passing through the frozen plains of repression, that is, the frozen soil, the frozen plains, passing through such deeply repressed frozen ground, surging forth in a great vortex of freedom, bursting out. This rage bursts forth, this emotion bursts forth, like summer lightning flashing across - the thunder and lightning in a summer rainstorm, the wild wind and flashing lightning, the lightning racing across the fields, raging joyfully.

Summary

Through this session we carefully analyzed the important role and significance of emotions and feelings in our lives. From now on we should face them squarely and dare to confront them.

The Prelude to the Seth Session: Jane's Supersensory State

After dinner, Jane showed some signs of entering an altered state of consciousness. She began talking about her silky skin, and the comfortable sensation of her sweater pressing against her back. Before the session she had felt something similar, only to a lesser degree. Now her acute hearing had already amplified sounds -- when she opened a box of cigarettes, the rustle of the cellophane, the quality of my voice as I talked with our cat Willy, and the sound of me turning the newspaper pages. She said more than once that words were almost inadequate to express her feelings, because they were too ordinary.

At this point Jane entered a kind of supersensory state. Her skin was unusually sensitive, able to feel the sensation of her sweater against her back, and her hearing was also extremely acute. Well, this is actually quite normal. Among the friends who study Seth with us, there is one who is like this -- recently her hearing has been unusually sensitive. Sensitive to what degree? She hears sounds from very, very far away, and those faint sounds are like deafening thunder in her ears. Even though cars nowadays are already very quiet, the sound of a car engine starting up gives her a feeling of motion sickness -- to her ears it sounds like a roar.

In my own actual life I have also had two experiences of particularly acute sensitivity. I heard the ticking of a quartz clock in a house several streets away, exceptionally clear and exceptionally loud, and I could tell precisely which house it was coming from. Another time was at home, around five or six in the morning, when I heard the sound of vehicles on a highway very, very far away, probably two or three kilometers or even three kilometers away, so clear that it was as if you were standing right beside the highway. He will explain later: when you allow your consciousness to flow freely, without so many restrictions, your senses will naturally become acute.

He said her state reminded him of several transcendent states she had achieved last year. He suggested she just go with the feeling, but Jane said she would rather have the session. She went into the living room to read, and found that the magazine she picked up felt somewhat heavier. Generally speaking, the beauty she saw in everyday things had been elevated considerably. She had originally planned to turn the sofa around so she could see the streetlights, but instead, she found herself admiring the bookshelf across from the sofa. By now her voice had acquired an indescribably richer quality, pleasant and low and unhurried. For a while she just sat there, marveling at the utterly ordinary things around her.

Our cat Willy jumped into her lap, and Jane told me it had become especially beautiful. When she touched it, its fur was so astonishingly smooth and alive -- the skin seemed to have come to life. On a sudden inspiration, Jane used her other hand to simultaneously touch the air beside Willy, and found that the tactile sensation was almost equally rich -- even the air had a rich texture to the touch.

We had a little snack, and then Jane moved to her rocking chair. As we waited for Seth to come, she looked around the room full of wonder, her eyes much deeper than usual. Jane said everything looked wonderful, and she said to Rob: you, this room, Willy, are all wonderful. But I think I could have a session. She did not finish the sentence, and then Seth came.

Session 645

The Invisible Core Beliefs Hidden Behind Bright Beliefs

Seth had some comments about her expanded state of awareness, which he only addressed in the latter half of the session. Then Seth began to speak:

When you examine the contents of your conscious mind, it may seem that you hold so many different beliefs at different times that you cannot possibly fuse them together. Yet they will form clear patterns.

That is to say, at different periods of our lives, when facing different people, events, and environments, we hold many different beliefs, and sometimes these beliefs are even contradictory and opposed to one another. But these contradictory beliefs form a very unique and clear belief system within me, and there may even be a group of core beliefs, with all the other beliefs revolving around this group of core beliefs.

If you think of the core beliefs as planets, then the other ideas are what revolve around the planets -- our other thoughts, notions, and ideas revolve around this planet.

There may be some invisible beliefs, and not just those minor peripheral beliefs and small notions -- even some of our very important core beliefs are invisible to us. To continue with the planet analogy: those invisible core beliefs are hiding behind the brighter, more obvious planets.

Some core beliefs go undiscovered by you precisely because they hide behind other more obvious beliefs, yet they can be revealed through their influence upon those other visible core beliefs within you and your planetary system.

You cannot see the belief itself, but you can see the influence this core belief has on other beliefs, and it is through its influence on other beliefs that you discover it. The example he gives actually hints at how the planets of our solar system were discovered -- when humanity discovered the eighth and ninth planets, at first neither was seen. It was only discovered that the orbital paths of the neighboring planets differed from the calculations, and this deviation suggested that there was another planet beyond them. It was in this way that they discovered Neptune⁹, and then used a similar method to discover Pluto¹⁰. But scientists today have removed Pluto from the list of nine planets¹¹, because in the region where Pluto is located, at the edge of the entire solar system, there are many small planets, and it has entered something like an asteroid belt, where there are many planets like Pluto -- not just that one.

Seth is making this point to tell you: some core beliefs are hidden behind brighter, more obvious beliefs, and we cannot see them, but you can discover their existence through the influence they exert on other beliefs.

He says, for example, when you study your own ideas, there are some questions you seem unable to answer, and this will make you suspect whether such invisible core beliefs exist behind them. When you are in dialogue with yourself, or analyzing your own belief system, when there are some questions you cannot answer -- for instance, why do I have this kind of emotion? Why do I have this kind of behavioral pattern? Why do I do such things and make such decisions? When you face yourself honestly and find that the question has no answer -- he says that at such times there is usually an invisible belief hidden behind it that you cannot see.

Let me emphasize that they can be consciously discovered.

You can find them using the methods mentioned earlier. The previous session mentioned two methods: one is through the rational approach, using reason to analyze your own core beliefs, analyzing step by step to find the core beliefs, the branches of the core beliefs, and the general beliefs; the other method is to trace backward along the direction of emotion -- why do you have this emotion or this feeling? What is the belief behind it? You must understand that it is belief that brings about this emotion, so what kind of belief is bringing about your present emotion? Trace backward in this way.

Begin with your own emotions, or with those beliefs that have become more easily accessible.

You can begin with emotions, or you can begin with your values, worldview, and outlook on life that you can discover and that are very obvious -- in short, begin by analyzing your belief system starting from your fundamental views.

Bridge Beliefs: The Similarities That Connect Opposing Beliefs

This topic leads to what I will call bridge beliefs. When you do this kind of analysis and look squarely at your own belief system, it will lead you to such a thing. And once again, Ruburt received some material on this topic in advance — in the notes from the previous session, Ruburt said at the beginning that there was a batch of material that could not be described in words, but that it seemed to contain something like bridge beliefs.

He said that when you examine ideas, you will find that even if they apparently contradict each other, they still have similarities — many beliefs that seem to contradict each other have some similar points between them, and these similarities can be used to bridge the gaps between beliefs. Even the beliefs that seem most opposite have certain similarities between them; as long as you look for them, these similar points are the places that connect the two beliefs together.

In other words, like a great tree, the place where a branch belief connects to the core belief is the connection point. This similar point is where the core belief and these branch beliefs connect. This kind of connection point is what we can call a bridge belief.

Because you are the one who holds the beliefs, you will stamp certain characteristics that you recognize with a mark.

In our simple terms, you put a label on it. Those characteristics will then reveal themselves as your bridge beliefs. They themselves contain great impetus and energy — once you find the similarity between two beliefs and put a label on that similarity, you will be very clear when you recognize them in the future.

When you discover what they are, you can find within yourself a unifying point, and from there you can examine your other belief systems more objectively.

A bridge belief is the similar place between two opposite, opposing beliefs. When you stand on this similar place — standing on the bridge belief — you are in effect straddling two opposite beliefs, and from there you can examine very well how your belief system is actually composed and constructed.

At this point some of you may be getting impatient: what exactly is a bridge belief, can you give an example? As we will see below, he later specifically uses Jane as a typical example to dissect what kind of belief is a bridge belief.

The emotions connected with these bridge beliefs may really surprise you.

Before you discover this bridge belief, you do not know where these emotions come from. Once you discover it, you will understand: oh, so that is how it is. But standing on these unifying bridges, you can freely let these emotions flow through quickly and feel them. Before, you did not know where they came from; these emotions baffled you. Once you recognize them, these emotions will automatically flow through quickly, and you can still feel them passing, without being stuck there.

But perhaps this is the first time you have become aware of the source of the emotions in your beliefs, and no longer fear that they will sweep you away.

When some emotions used to come up, you did not know their source, so you were afraid — afraid that these emotions rose up without cause, swept in without cause, as if you could not control your own emotions and feelings at all. When you discover the source of these emotions that previously seemed to come from nowhere, you will no longer be afraid, because you know where they come from and which belief they come from.

It is impossible to tell you the emotional truth of such an experience; you must discover it for yourself.

You have to feel it yourself. This is something you must remember.

Such bridge beliefs often let you perceive those invisible beliefs I mentioned tonight.

Why does he bring this up today? Because since he has said that you have many beliefs that are invisible, how can those invisible beliefs be discovered? Besides discovering them through the influence of these invisible beliefs on other beliefs, using the two methods taught in the previous session — whether from the direction of emotion or from the direction of belief — another way is this: through the discovery of bridge beliefs, you can often also perceive those invisible beliefs.

And these show themselves to you as a revelation.

You will discover: oh, so I actually hold such an idea. Yet, thinking about it further, you can understand that it was actually another belief that covered it up, but you were always aware of it to some degree. In a strange way, it is not visible to you — you cannot see it, also because you take it for granted.

You cannot see it, so you take it for granted, just as we cannot see air — because we feel that air is simply a given. You do not treat it as a belief about reality; you treat it as reality itself, and never question it. You treat it as a fact, and do not feel that it is merely one of your own ideas. For example, many people feel that men are simply better than women, so you treat that as a fact, and do not feel that it is merely one of your own ideas, one of your own beliefs. You say: no, this is a patriarchal society, this society is a patriarchal society, and in a patriarchal society men will have greater advantages. If you insist on such a belief, you will treat it as a fact in your perception, firmly convinced, and you will not question it.

Angela's Example: Treating Beliefs as Facts

Seth says this Angela never doubted the "fact" that life is harder for a woman than for a man. Angela considered this a fact, just like the things Chinese people often say, such as "It is hard to be a woman, and even harder to be a successful woman" and so on -- these are all ideas instilled in you, just a thought, not truth, not fact. Be sure to remember this.

Women have their own advantages, which men can never match. When she examined her beliefs, this belief escaped her -- namely, that in life, life is always harder for a woman than for a man, especially for a married woman, especially for a divorced woman, and especially for one with three children, which makes it harder still.

Think carefully: in your own life, are there many situations where something is clearly a belief, a concept, yet you treat it as a fact? That is why you cannot see it. You feel, "I do not have that kind of idea," but when you dig carefully, you discover: oh, it turns out it is only a concept, not a fact.

Yet this invisible belief influenced her behavior and her experience.

When she defined it as a fact in this way, then she was bound to have such results affecting her. Now she understands it, and she treats it as a belief to be dealt with, rather than as an uncontrollable fact. What is the essential difference between these two? The difference is huge: when you treat it as a belief, you can replace it at any time -- this statement is just a belief, just someone's viewpoint, and I can replace it at any time. I can also believe that, in fact, this world is actually easier for women than for men, and I can replace it with a completely opposite belief, and that would also be a fact.

I have many examples here; let me just give one at random. In mainland China right now, we know that housing prices in big cities are very expensive, and in second- and third-tier cities they are also quite expensive. As a woman, you do not have the pressure of buying a house -- you can require the man to have a house and a car, and the man has to prepare the money to buy the house and the car. This is a social consensus: what good does this patriarchal society do for men, you might ask? Not much good at all. So the pressure on women is much less.

A couple of days ago I noticed a phenomenon. People were saying, why do we see so many women among students studying abroad, even more than men, and why are the women's circumstances better than the men's? Women dare to spend money, dress themselves up beautifully, buy nice handbags, and drive nice cars; while men, one after another, live that kind of -- if you have been abroad you know -- most men live very frugal lives. This was a question on Zhihu a couple of days ago: why is it that after going abroad, the young women studying overseas seem more and more beautiful, and their lives more and more comfortable, while the men are not like that? Then many men replied below, and one man's reply gained everyone's approval. He said: if I did not have the pressure of buying a house, and if my family also did not have the pressure of buying a house, then I could also live as easily, freely, and enjoyably as these women.

Let us not first discuss whether this view is right or wrong, but just the fact he stated: he felt that when men study abroad, they have to consider cost-effectiveness. They have to think about all the tuition and expenses over these four years of study abroad, or three more years of graduate school, and what kind of job and what kind of income they will need after returning home in order to earn back these millions in expenses, and what would be a good return on investment. He said women never have to consider this problem. Women just say: oh, I do not like the domestic environment anymore, I want to go abroad; I like this kind of art school, I like this, I like that. For the past few decades China had the one-child policy¹², and the family had only this one precious daughter, so most parents would encourage their daughter to study abroad, and the family did not have that much economic pressure regarding a daughter, nor did they need to prepare a marital home for her. So this is a very common phenomenon.

I give this example to tell you: if you think women have no advantages in a patriarchal society, what I actually want to tell you is that women have their own unique advantages that men do not have, and women themselves do not see them. In other words, if you believe that kind of belief is a fact, then you really only see that -- all you see is men holding the advantages, including male actors earning more than female actors, and men earning more than women for the same work, and so on. I think it is only because you believe that, so all you see are those facts. But there are also other facts you do not see. For example, many IT company executives and bosses are women, such as the former female CEO of Hewlett-Packard¹³, and many directors and executives active on the front lines of IT are women. It seems the sales director of Apple is a woman¹⁴ -- responsible for all offline sales in Apple stores, with a very high annual salary, much higher than its CEO. I just give this example to say that you cannot look at this issue that way.

Bridging Beliefs in Dreams and Inner Reconciliation

He says that in the dream state you may come to know your bridging beliefs. If this happens, then although the dream itself is not consciously remembered -- you may not know at night what the dream actually meant, and you may even forget the dream entirely -- this conscious information may suddenly surface during the day: that is, the information about the bridging belief, it suddenly surfaces at some point during the day.

With conscious understanding, you will feel within yourself a kind of reconciliation.

Once you recognize the bridging belief, you stop fighting within yourself. When you first begin studying spiritual knowledge, when you begin consciously and deliberately examining your own thoughts, scanning your thoughts the way you would scan a frequency spectrum, looking at what beliefs you hold and what thoughts you have, many people at this point discover that they are in a state of fighting with both hands -- two completely opposite beliefs are at war with each other. When you recognize this kind of bridging belief, you will suddenly experience an inner reconciliation, you make peace with yourself, and it feels especially comfortable and smooth, that complete sense of unity feels especially good.

In dreams he can use different symbols, and each person will differ in this regard. When such dreams are remembered, they often involve personal symbols. For example, you safely cross a river, or cross an ocean, or a bridge connects a mountain ravine -- everyone's symbols are different. Perhaps it could be another kind, maybe in modern society it is a phone that could not connect to the internet suddenly connecting, or a computer that could not get online suddenly getting online, or a website you previously could not access suddenly becoming accessible -- all are possible, everyone's symbols are somewhat different.

He says that at such times there may also be intense emotional content, such as finally overcoming psychological chaos, or even being resurrected from death. You can also suggest to yourself, allowing this bridging belief to emerge.

The conscious idea itself represents a statement of intent.

Various core beliefs that do not blend well with one another will give you contradictory self-images. Because the beliefs themselves are self-contradictory, the self-image and self-perception you give yourself will also produce self-contradiction -- you cannot tell whether you are a qualified mother or an excellent female entrepreneur. You often try to do both well, and in the end you find that the two constantly conflict. When you throw yourself into work you neglect your family, and you often cannot figure out your own state. So you end up with two self-contradictory images: at one moment in the company you are one way, and at another moment back home you are another way.

He now compares the following two differences. The first is:

You can freely experiment with and enjoy different styles of clothing, attitudes, and actions.

The other is:

You find yourself lost in a compulsive state of wanting to change your appearance, attitudes, and behavior.

The first is when you enjoy the differences that two completely different belief systems bring you, and you can freely shift between different beliefs -- possibly even between different core beliefs -- just as you enjoy different clothing. You can wear formal attire, you can wear casual clothes, you can wear denim shorts, you can also wear a business suit, it is entirely up to you, and you can handle all of them. This is an enjoyable approach, affirming who you are in the present, affirming the existence of these different beliefs, without fighting yourself.

The second is finding yourself lost -- why lost? You are within two diametrically opposed belief systems, and contradictory belief systems will bring about contradictory selves, forming two completely different selves. At this point you will compulsively shift between these two self-images, forcing yourself to switch from one persona to another. And in the process of forcing yourself to switch, you also become lost -- you no longer know who you are: am I a female boss, or a qualified mother, or a gentle wife, or someone's daughter? She is not enjoying the process, but rather losing herself in the switching between roles.

He says these are two completely different states. The latter usually involves opposing core beliefs that pull you alternately in different directions; whereas the former is when there is a bridging belief between the core beliefs, connecting the two opposing beliefs together.

Once you understand this, it is not difficult to examine your beliefs, identify these, and find a bridge to unify the seemingly contradictory areas.

When you discover in the switching of roles or emotions that all of this is caused by beliefs, then it is not difficult for you to discover your own beliefs. When you discover these contradictory core beliefs, you need to find a way to create a bridge, and use this bridge to unify these seemingly contradictory areas.

Jane's Bridge Belief: Writer and Psychic

Jane's trance state was very deep this time, and she did not hear the occasional sounds of floor repair coming from downstairs. Her very comfortable altered state continued during the break, and the sensory data was truly rich, with everything having such a wonderful unity. Rob explained: when I write, the movement of my hand is related to the sound of cars passing the house; her rocking chair made rhythmic noises that had sensory contact with the touch of the fabric of her slacks under her palm; when she slid one finger down along the crease of her slacks, it produced an amplified long sound; when she stood up, her upper body was especially relaxed.

During the break, we heard an old neighbor downstairs, Margaret, calling her cat Susie. Jane said this reminded her of a fish—she had a comical image: Margaret's big mouth sent her call through the air like ripples of water, wrapping Susie up and pulling her back home.

Jane thought she was experiencing the results of experimenting with bridge beliefs, and since she had received that material in advance, I asked her whether Seth would have anything to say about this personal reaction of hers. She said all right, I will wait here, and then began to continue transmitting the material.

Seth said:

From the beginning of this book, this Ruburt has been experimenting with his beliefs, and using those methods in her own way, just as every reader must also do.

Previously, when Jane was working on Seth Speaks, she avoided looking at the contents of the book; by the time of The Nature of Personal Reality, she was learning as she spoke, listening as she spoke, and practicing as she spoke. So Seth said that Jane was experimenting with her own beliefs from the very beginning, using the several methods we introduced earlier to discover her own beliefs and examine her own conscious mind. When we study The Nature of Personal Reality, we must learn to examine our own beliefs ourselves.

When he began, it was hard for him to believe that so many answers could be found in the conscious mind.

At the very beginning of the sessions, Ruburt did not quite believe that there were so many answers in the conscious mind. When he later discovered that this was indeed the case, he could not help being astonished—he found that there were originally so many answers in his own conscious mind.

He said that here he would use him as an example to show how a bridge belief can emerge, to fuse ideas that seem completely opposite.

Ruburt is determined, persistent, and stubborn, with great energy; he is himself creative, and he is also intuitive, and his conscious gifts have excellent flexibility.

Ruburt's character is persistent, determined, and stubborn, with great energy, and at the same time he has great creativity and intuition. He can be on the stubborn side, and also on the flexible side, the intuitive side.

And he has built his life upon the core belief that he is a writer.

Jane, or Ruburt, built his life upon the core belief that he is a writer. He considered himself a writer, and through this belief he viewed all experiences and connected them together—all the people, things, and events he encountered in life, all his realizations, were viewed through the belief that "I am a writer."

He encouraged those impulses that could reinforce this belief, and discouraged those that could not reinforce his being a writer.

He encouraged the impulses that could make him become a writer, but discouraged those impulses, those behaviors, those inspirations that could not reinforce his being a writer.

Now because of such a particular temperament, it can be said that he put all his eggs in one basket.

What basket? "I am a writer."

Those of you who do the same thing, think about yourself: do you also have an identity for yourself? What kind of person am I? I am a boss, a salesperson, a designer, a painter, a singer... You could say I am my husband's little darling, I am the pillar of my family, I am the family's source of income, I am the backbone of my company. No matter in what way, you look at life from such an angle. This is your core belief, and you use this core belief to organize all your experiences. Every one of us is like this—first give yourself a positioning—the word "persona" is easier to understand—define a persona for yourself: this is just how I am.

Whatever that is, you will primarily organize experience along one particular line.

No matter what kind of persona you have, you will organize all the experiences in your life along this persona, weaving them together. It can be your gender role or your professional role—some people make decisions based on gender: I am a woman, I am a man; or profession: I am a teacher, I am someone who teaches and educates. You may first regard yourself as a mother. Once you have set your persona, you will highlight a certain trait: if you define yourself as a mother, then being a mother makes you strong, and you take care of the child in every way; if you are a father, then you must stand tall and shelter the family from wind and rain. No matter what it is, you will highlight your trait, and this trait is connected to the persona you set earlier.

If the original idea continues to expand with your experience, and if it in itself does not give you great limitations, then this kind of concentration is very good.

That is to say, if this persona does not give you great limitations, then this concentration is the concentrated expression of your traits—you may have many potentials as a person, but in this life you may concentrate on one particular aspect, and this is a good thing, it is normal.

The disadvantage is that you cannot have limitations.

The problem for many of us is that after excessive concentration, we also add limitations to ourselves.

You may primarily think of yourself as a mother. Initially that may only involve staying at home to take care of the children, but if your concept of yourself remains so limited, then she may exclude her identity as your husband's wife, and also deny many of your other interests, and prevent your personality from expanding in other directions.

This kind of example is very common in mainland China, and somewhat better abroad. Now whether it is the post-70s, post-80s, post-90s, including the current post-00s, as soon as they get married they quickly have children. Once the child is born, a very common social phenomenon is: the child sleeps with the mother, the mother accompanies the child to sleep at night, and sends her own husband off to another room. What is this? You have over-strengthened your role as a mother, and you have forgotten that you are also a wife, and that you also have someone you love. You put all your energy into the child, and it limits you.

The contrast is very stark: before she became a mother, she was a happy little girl, going shopping, traveling, being romantic, writing poetry and prose; when she suddenly became a mother, it was all diapers, pacifiers, formula, baby clothes, vaccinations, vaccines, tutoring classes—the romance in her life was swept away completely.

So in the same way, if your core belief emphasizes your spirituality to such an extent that it cuts off your necessary physical sensory expression, then it becomes limiting, and in the end it may even stifle the very spiritual experience it was meant to express.

We all understand the mother example. He says if your core belief holds that spirituality is very important, and that physical senses are unimportant or even lowly, that spirituality is noble and the soul is noble—if you think spiritual things are important, and physical sensory expression is unnecessary, cut it where you can, avoid it where you can, do not have more pursuits, because more pursuits are all external temptations that disturb my mind—then you will completely stifle yourself in terms of physical senses. Many practitioners, many spiritual practitioners are like this, becoming a state of detachment toward the outer world, feeling that as long as they develop and achieve in spirituality, that is enough. Not only have you not expanded your spiritual experience, you have also stifled your own spiritual experience—because your spiritual experience wants to express itself in the three-dimensional world, wants to be experienced through your physical body, and physical experience is part of spiritual experience.

Jane's Dilemma: Two Conflicting Core Beliefs

When Ruburt was experimenting with his beliefs, he found himself face to face with two conflicting core beliefs.

His writing self followed one belief: that writing a certain kind of material was easy, permissible, and good.

His core belief held that as a writer, writing novels and poetry was good. Then he began training himself to reject any contrary impulses -- when he did not write novels or poetry and instead began writing spiritual material, he rejected that impulse. He felt this was not something a writer should be doing. From a young age he had built his life along these lines: I am a writer, I write things. He wrote poetry when he was very young, just like the literary young people of today who often write poetry.

After the psychic experiences began, after he made contact with Seth, he found himself wanting to write about the things that were happening to him, and he used that material creatively -- he wanted to write out the material from the channeling process. But then the problem arose: his earlier belief that he was "a writer" conflicted with these new desires.

The core belief or persona of "being a writer" did not allow him to become a psychic. Because apart from novels, he did not consider anything else to be a writer's work -- he believed a writer wrote novels, and poetry counted as an exception. Apart from those two, he could not write anything else; none of that was what a writer should be doing -- in other words, it was not proper work.

He then created two compartments in his life: one was the psychic, the other was the writer.

Jane became split into two parts: one part was the writer, the other was the psychic.

The writing self looked askance at any creative material that did not come from the kind of inspiration he was familiar with earlier, and he insisted that such creative material must come from outside Ruburt's regular five hours of writing time each day.

The persona of "the writer" looked askance at the psychic self -- the material obtained outside those five hours of proper creative time, he considered all of it to be not proper work. So Jane set herself an unshakable five hours of writing time every day, placing herself at the desk, opening paper and pen, creating like a writer should. But if you think about it, after she made contact with Seth she wrote The Oversoul Seven trilogy, including the poetry collections she wrote, The Politics of the Psyche¹⁵, and much material related to Seth -- all of that was the bursting forth of her inspiration, all of it highly creative work. She did not really acknowledge any of it -- she felt that only those five hours in the morning were the time when she should truly create as a writer, and anything produced outside of that was not proper work.

These beliefs generated her own emotions.

Beliefs bring their own emotions -- Seth repeatedly emphasized this. What emotions? When Ruburt was recognized by others as a psychic, he would get angry. When others introduced Ruburt as a psychic, as someone who wrote books about psychic matters, he would get very angry and would insist: No, I am a writer.

But looking back now, Jane did not achieve much as a writer in this life. Although she wrote many novels, those all came from her own inspired feelings after connecting with Seth, including The Oversoul Seven trilogy -- she wrote about matters between several souls¹⁶, and those books all revolved around the Seth material. Yet she firmly denied this; she felt she was just a popular novelist. Look at The Oversoul Seven trilogy -- clearly it was her own extrasensory experiences opening up and connecting with other souls -- some ancient, some present, some future -- she communicated with these souls, yet she insisted on writing it in the form of a novel. It was clearly a record of her own extrasensory experiences, but she insisted on presenting it as fiction, because she felt that was her proper work. So when others said she was a psychic, she was furious.

Whenever two strongly conflicting core beliefs meet, the same dilemma can occur in the experience of any reader.

This kind of situation, in our real lives, every reader and listener among us will have similar problems. Think carefully: do you have the same problem? When others say you are such and such, you are extremely unwilling to accept it; you always want to give yourself a label, a persona, and have others perceive you that way.

For example, being a mother is your core belief, and it is also an expression of life value that you are willing to pursue. Yet on the other hand, you also vaguely feel that being only a mother -- all the knowledge you learned in college, all those years of education -- seems to have turned you into merely a tool for continuing the family line, and you are not reconciled to that. So when others call you a housewife, you absolutely do not want to hear it; you would rather go to work. But at work you are not willing to work wholeheartedly either; you feel that working is only to satisfy the material conditions for raising your children. You suffer in the tangle between these two.

You must know that Ruburt also believed in his psychic work and was completely committed to it.

If he had no commitment, he would not have kept at it until now. This was 1973, and he had been channeling for about ten years -- starting from 1963, during those ten years he held two or three sessions almost every week without fail. He also believed this work was meaningful. Jane was not a person who wasted time; every minute had to be put to use for value.

Belief Conflicts Manifesting in the Body

So he developed some physical conditions.

When these two core beliefs came into conflict, Ruburt developed some physical conditions -- why was his body not well? Including why later he could not walk and his joints began to have problems -- all of these were because his own beliefs had gone wrong.

And in order to carry out his beliefs, he was trying to find ways to resolve these symptoms.

He saw how these two opposing beliefs were perfectly reflected in his own inner image -- one was a psychic, the other was a writer. In his own inner image, he frequently switched back and forth between these two roles.

He insisted on scheduling his sessions with Seth only after nine o'clock in the evening -- think carefully about it, why did she insist on setting the time after nine o'clock? Because in America, after nine o'clock most people are getting ready to sleep. Their lives were relatively simple and monotonous; after working all day, by nine-something in the evening they basically began to rest. Yet Jane insisted on setting this time at three times a week, or two times, always after nine o'clock or after nine-thirty. She felt this was a side job, something unimportant, something that could not interfere with her daily schedule as a writer. She could only carve out a block of time from her own rest hours to help Seth transmit this material, and that was acceptable to her. If you asked her to sit here at nine o'clock in the morning and formally transmit the Seth material, she would not do it, would not accept it, would not approve of it -- she felt it was not doing proper work. Now you understand why so many people ask why Jane's body became so poor in the end -- she had been speaking Seth's books for such a long time, why could she not help herself? You can see that her inner conflict was actually very great.

He said, I give her useful material, but only she herself can feel it, and it must travel through her own belief system before it can be of use to her.

On this issue Seth was always helping her. Seth saw the conflict between her two beliefs, and Seth said he gave her useful material, but this material had to be transformed into her own belief system. For us as readers and listeners today, this means that if you study the Seth material but do not apply it in practice -- in other words, if you do not analyze your own core beliefs, your own belief system -- then there is not much difference between having studied it and not having studied it. Just as Seth said about Jane: Seth gave Jane many methods for solving problems through channeling, but Jane had to take them out and use them within her own belief system for them to work. If you only know the theory and do not change, adjust, or even replace your belief system, then it is of no use to you.

When you understand the nature of reality and the role you play in forming it, then you can no longer expect others to solve your problems for you.

You must underline this sentence and remember it: we know that the external environment is all created by ourselves. "You create your own reality" -- Seth emphasized this sentence repeatedly from the very beginning. Beliefs create reality; your surrounding environment and your present situation are all created by yourself, so this problem can only be solved by yourself, and no one else can solve it for you. Even if Seth came, it would be of no use -- some people say, what would happen if I made contact with Seth? Even if you made contact with the Jade Emperor, it would be of no use; you still have to solve your own problems yourself. When solving problems yourself, you must realize that your beliefs are something you yourself must blend together -- integrate these opposing beliefs within yourself so that you no longer struggle.

The exercises we did a couple of days ago, whether in a meditative state or in studying the Human Robot User Manual and the Operating Manual, all tell you that you must become one with yourself and not struggle. So at this point, if you discover that you have opposing beliefs, you must blend them together yourself, or integrate them, using your own methods, and mix rich creative ingredients into them. In other words, you must bring creativity into your beliefs -- see whether your belief system has creativity, or whether it is only used to cope with the needs of daily life, with nothing creative in it at all. This is the key point.

The Power of Belief

If you believe a certain food will help you, then it will be effective because of your belief; if you feel that eating something is good for you, it will truly be effective for you because of your belief. If you believe in doctors, then doctors can truly help you; if you believe in healers, they can help you. This tells you how important belief is. But in the end, all of these forces are only temporary -- this external force, whether it is a doctor or external help of any kind, is temporary. What is real? It is yourself. Whether it is a doctor, or those external people who wake you up, or Seth, they are all temporary; what is real is that you heal yourself.

Ruburt has understood this. He accepts the fact that he forms his own reality.

Ruburt accepted this fact. Some aspects of this fact manifested in the physical realm, which made him deeply uneasy -- on the one hand he is a psychic, and on the other hand a writer, so he would feel deeply uneasy in the physical realm. But at the same time he also understood that he could not use Seth as a crutch. This is what Seth told Ruburt, and it is also what he tells all of us: we cannot use anything external as a crutch. It may work temporarily, but once you have used it, discard it, and still turn to your own inner self to find the source of strength.

Seth mentioned the book Dialogues -- that is, Dialogues of the Soul and Mortal Self in Time, which was already completed. Why mention this book? This book, through its question-and-answer format, represents a change within himself. When Ruburt wrote this book, he was in fact already reconciling with himself. In other words, his mortal self -- that is, his ego, his self aspect -- wanted to be a writer; while his inner soul wanted him to transmit the Seth material. So before this, he had been caught in this kind of entanglement and contradiction. When he wrote this poetry collection, he could see both of them existing at the same time, and he let them converse with each other.

Seth said earlier that one way to list your beliefs, or to describe your belief system, is to have a dialogue with yourself. Jane happened to be doing exactly this -- she personified both the ego and the soul, stepped outside, and let the two of them chat directly, communicate directly.

Through writing this poetry collection and creating this dialogue, Ruburt faced many different beliefs.

In the process of writing this dialogue, he faced many different beliefs, because he discovered that there were two very opposing aspects within his belief system.

Every reader -- every one of us as readers or listeners -- whether or not you are involved in artistic achievement, can use this same method.

That is, the method of dialoguing with yourself, objectifying your personal beliefs into the form of a dialogue. On the one hand, you act as a recorder, recording the dialogue between the two of them, like a bystander, watching what your ego and your higher self are saying to each other.

When you give your natural creativity a great deal of freedom, this often happens in the dream state as well. Often in a certain kind of dream, in a dream, you are two separate people, strangers or familiar with each other, one asking the other questions.

When you give yourself more creative freedom and begin to allow yourself to converse with your own soul, this kind of state often appears in dreams. Among those of us studying the Seth material, some students have already begun to converse with their higher selves, in different ways. If you look carefully at the comments under YouTube videos, or at the posts in the groups, you will find that some people already have this ability.

The day in the previous session when Jane received the bridge belief in advance, she suddenly felt that everything had become clear. She was especially excited that day, saying that there was a pile of material above her head, but it was not in words -- there were no words, and she did not know what it was, but she felt very excited, as if many problems had been solved.

The writing self found itself increasingly blocked.

This writing self found that it was being restricted, because its beliefs were limited, and it could not make use of excellent material. If Jane forced herself to keep writing novels while avoiding spiritual matters, without drawing on the creative inspiration and source that arose from the Seth material, she found that she could not write anything useful, could not write a proper novel, and was just blocked there, often sitting there day after day unable to write, without even any inspiration.

He was so defensively concentrated upon his own material that he blocked his creative flow.

He sat fixedly at the desk for five hours every day, believing that only that counted as novel writing, and that nothing else counted as creation. So when he channeled with Seth at night and received a great deal of inspiration and feeling, and wanted to write it down, on the other hand he rejected it, telling himself not to write it, that it was not the kind of thing a proper writer should write, and so he blocked this creative flow.

Meanwhile those aspects of Ruburt that were unacceptable -- unacceptable according to Ruburt's main core values -- were happily continuing to create other books, not even including his own.

Seth uses a very humorous way of putting it here: the psychic persona that the writer persona did not accept -- of course these are all different personas of Jane herself -- that psychic persona was very happily continuing to create other books, one after another, and even helped Seth write two books. So you can imagine how jealous and angry that writer self was. Clearly he was a writer, yet he could not write anything of value or inspiration; but as a psychic, his thoughts flowed like a spring, and his writing seemed divinely inspired. That writer self must have been very depressed, sitting there five hours a day, unable to write anything.

Ruburt found himself bargaining with the earlier writing self, and then suddenly said, what am I doing?

One day Ruburt suddenly discovered that he was bargaining with that earlier writing self. What does bargaining mean? It means he wanted to fight for more time, wanting to use the daytime as well to write these things. The writing self told him no, that was the minimum five hours of creative time you should preserve as a novelist, do not use it to write these spiritual things. The two of them were bargaining. Then Jane suddenly said to herself: what am I doing? I am fighting my left hand with my right hand, what am I doing?

Then he saw that the core belief by which he regarded himself as a writer was truly very limiting. He had not understood this before; he felt it was simply a fact: I am a writer, period.

Because he had consciously known it before, yet kept it hidden and unexamined.

He already knew that as a writer he had this limitation, which restricted the source of his creative inspiration and material, but he clearly knew it, yet pretended not to see it, maintaining it in a hidden and unexamined state.

He realized that whether the writing aspect or the psychic aspect, each one wanted to write.

This is the bridge belief. He suddenly understood that when these two were fighting left hand against right hand, bargaining with himself, he suddenly realized: do they not both want to write? Do they not both want to publish books? Does publishing not bring income either way? Does it not let more people know? In other words, whether writing novels, or writing these spiritual materials, or the feelings from channeling -- is this not all creation? You could even turn spiritual material into novels. He actually did exactly that later; his Oversoul Seven series of novels was completed on this foundation.

So two seemingly opposing beliefs -- one being a psychic, the other being a writer -- Jane found the bridge belief between them. This bridge belief is: both of them want to express, both want to write, both want others to know, both want to spread it outward. That is the core. There is another core, which Seth was too polite to point out: both of them can make money, both bring income, both can solve the problem of making a living, and there is no conflict -- it is not only novels that can make money. Of course, Seth may not have mentioned this point.

Jane persuaded herself from this angle, and reconciled with herself: writing these spiritual materials, the things that come from inspiration, is also writing; writing novels is also writing, and there is no conflict. These two core beliefs were originally opposed to each other, one looking down on the other, and they reconciled. This is the importance and function of the bridge belief.

He wants each of us, when looking for our own core beliefs, if we find that core beliefs are in conflict, to unify them. Some core beliefs can be discarded and replaced, but some core beliefs you cannot discard. For example, with Jane, which of these two core beliefs could she discard? On the one hand she felt she was a writer, on the other hand she felt she was a psychic; neither could be discarded. Just like each of us -- do you not have multiple roles on you? You have many personas existing at the same time -- you are a mother, and someone's wife, and an employee at your workplace, and a team leader, or someone else's subordinate. This sense of identity contains many personas, and you cannot replace all of them.

Many beliefs cannot be replaced; they are your basic personas. How could you replace them? So at this point Seth tells you, what should you do? You need to find the common points, the similar points, the connecting points among these beliefs, find this bridge belief, and use the bridge belief to blend, to harmonize, to reconcile with yourself, to reach agreement, so that these beliefs can be unified into a consistent, non-conflicting belief system.

And once you stand upon the bridge belief, the emotions that were originally in conflict, the places where you were originally entangled, those feelings and emotions will flow naturally, so your creativity will become stronger, and it will help both aspects. For each of us as readers and listeners, it is the same: when you recognize that these core beliefs themselves have a certain degree of conflict, when you can discover the common points, the harmonizing points, the unifying points among them, and bring them together in coordination and consistency, your inner state is incomparably smooth and at ease. When you discover that being a mother and being a professional woman are not in conflict in themselves, the joy and lightness in your heart truly cannot be expressed in words. You can try applying this bridge belief.

He was now beginning to merge those new available energies.

He could now begin to use those energies that he had not used before, the things he had previously pushed away. He understood that he himself was the one who held those beliefs, the one who held these two different beliefs.

And he no longer identified completely with one core belief, that identification which had previously prevented his free movement and expansion.

That identification with only one core value was the limiting factor that prevented his free movement and expansion. Once you have the bridge belief, you remove this limitation and make use of the energies of both aspects.

The original belief meant that he viewed the world from a mental standpoint, roughly considering the writer and the mind to be the same thing, and treating the body as a carrier.

The original primitive belief was to treat the body as a carrier, a vehicle, rather than regarding it as a living organism, not believing that the body is alive, with its own perception and all-encompassing feeling.

But biological experience must come through the flesh.

Yet our biological experience all comes through the perception of the flesh.

Therefore tonight the senses were allowed their freedom.

Why did Jane tonight have such sensitive skin, such sensitive hearing, all kinds of sensations, even the air feeling as though it had texture when touched? It was because she allowed the senses their freedom.

But this experience was amplified by his psychic sensitivity.

Seth was operating behind all of this. What he did was to make Jane feel: the source of your creativity comes not only from your thoughts, but also from your physical senses. Whether touch, hearing, or smell, all are sources of your creation, all can bring you inspiration. If you can tune your senses to be more acute, when you observe the things around you, even a cat will seem so lovely, even the house will become lovely, the tables and chairs, including the clothes you wear, all so comfortable and well-fitting -- when all of these things become so beautiful, that is your physical senses.

Seth used this kind of experience to make Jane realize: the source of your creativity comes not only from the mental or intellectual level; your physical level can likewise bring you creative inspiration.

If you primarily think of yourself as identical with the physical creature, then following your belief, you may block the psychic or emotional levels.

If you believe you are only a material existence, without psychic and emotional existence, then you block these aspects. In such a case, examining your beliefs will lead you to more experience along the mental and psychic path.

But all are interconnected, and you cannot ignore any one without damaging the others.

What he means is that your mental experience and your physical experience are the same. The example he gave earlier was the opposite case -- Jane felt that the mental and intellectual realm was more important, because she was a writer, so she should experience more in that area, while physical experience was less important. That is why you find that Jane rarely traveled, rarely went out to activities, rarely did outdoor things, because she felt that the most important thing for a writer was the activity inside the brain. But Seth told her it was not so. Through tonight's experience of her hypersensitive senses, Seth told her: your creative inspiration can come entirely from your physical body. This is why Jane had so many unusual sensations at the beginning of this session; Seth wanted to use this living feeling to make Jane realize this.

Conversely, in reality many people believe that we only have a body, that we are merely physical beings, with no essential difference from other creatures, all needing to reproduce, and that the purpose of living is reproduction, just to eat well, take care of one's own life, and have more children -- this is the main goal of our lives. If you do not acknowledge that you have psychic or emotional needs, you will not develop greatly in that area, and you will completely block the energy and possibilities of those aspects. If you equate yourself with a purely material creature, then all you have is eating, drinking, defecating, urinating, and sleeping -- three meals and a nap, eat until full and sleep, sleep until full and eat -- and your life's pursuit is nothing more than that.

You must not be one-sided in either direction -- you cannot say I only pursue spiritual things and not physical things; nor can you say I only pursue physical things and not spiritual things. These two must be integrated. What does Seth mean by this viewpoint? At this point he is telling you, pointing out a bridge belief. These two are themselves two opposing beliefs; if you cannot unify them, then you will have many, many difficulties on the spiritual path. That is why many practitioners get stuck on this issue; they set these two beliefs in opposition and do not know which side to follow. A spiritual self looks down on the physical self, while the physical self cannot control its own primal desires, and the two become entangled with each other. What Seth is actually telling us here is that in the growth of the spiritual and the physical, you should have a bridge belief like this, to integrate the two. They are interconnected, and you cannot shake them off -- you cannot say that if I ignore the spiritual world, it will have no effect on my body. Impossible. When your spiritual world is barren and impoverished, your body will definitely develop problems. Nor can you say the reverse, that I only pay attention to the condition of my body, keeping it in great shape, eating well and drinking well, working out every day, strong limbs but simple mind -- that does not work either. These two are complementary, and you must not be one-sided.

The Experience of Ecstasy

Then Seth said, now you may rest. At this point Jane was describing her own feelings: she said she had gone out very far, very far away. She knew Seth was talking about her, but she did not know what he was saying, yet she had a feeling of ecstasy. We can see that after Jane had integrated two of her own beliefs within herself, that feeling of ecstasy was very pronounced. She could not describe it; she only knew she could call it ecstasy.

Like waves, this feeling of ecstasy flowed through her like waves, and her clothes against her skin felt extremely sensitive.

The sensation of clothes against her skin was extremely sensitive. She said my body is so sensitive I can hardly bear it. This is a state of heightened perception, very interesting. This kind of thing occasionally happens in reality. I remember reading a news story once about a girl whose skin suddenly became hypersensitive, so sensitive that she was constantly in a state of heightened sexual arousal or something similar to orgasm, because any contact with her body made her feel incredibly excited. It is somewhat like Jane's state at that moment — that state of heightened perception is incomparably wonderful, but no one can endure that kind of continuous, prolonged stimulation; you cannot remain in that state all the time.

Jane herself described it: the sound of a passing car jumped upward from her legs, as if the sound itself had taken on a shape and was leaping upward, passing through her body all the way to her fingertips. The sound of water dripping somewhere in the room, the sound of water flowing through the pipes, all filled her with excitement. She wanted to continue the session, and she tried very hard to reduce her reactions. She lit a cigarette, closed her eyes, and wanted to go on.

The Unnatural Need to Justify Existence

Then at this point Seth came back again.

Ruburt also saw that he believed he had to justify his existence through writing.

Seth again pointed out a belief of Ruburt's, a belief that every one of us has: Ruburt felt that he had to write in order to have value in existing, that this was the embodiment of his personal value in this society. If he wrote nothing, he felt his existence had no meaning, and he would feel worthless and meaningless. If I don't write, and I don't work, then I'm just idling away my days waiting to die, so what's the point of living? I'm just wasting food; I'm a parasite on humanity.

He did not trust his basic right to exist in time and space, and these old beliefs had not yet caught up with his newer beliefs.

This was an old belief he had, and this belief is in every one of us. I think every one of us has it to a greater or lesser degree—always feeling that our existence has to have some meaning we find for ourselves, and if we can't find a meaning, we feel as if we are utterly worthless. This is a very strange thing. Look at how Seth continues:

Many of my readers have the same unnatural need to justify existence.

You must remember this sentence: it is an unnatural need. Everyone has this unnaturalness, and you don't need it. You don't need to justify your own existence, saying "why should I be alive," "why am I here in this world"—because I have value, I have meaning, I am a mother, I am a writer, I am a worker, I am the head of a household, I am someone's child, I am someone's son, I have to care for my parents until they die. Totally unnecessary. You don't need any of that. Your existence itself is the greatest value, and your existence itself is the greatest meaning. Your being alive, living in the present moment, is already the greatest value and meaning; you don't need to find some other reason or excuse for yourself.

It's as if unless you accomplish something, you have no face to remain in this world—and this belief is what has crushed so many people, preventing them from living happily, from laughing heartily like a child, laughing without a care in the world. Children don't have this concept; a child never feels that if he hasn't accomplished something, he has no face to eat, no face to play, no face to play games. He plays with a clear conscience, eats with total enjoyment, completely free of any psychological pressure. And then we criticize him, saying, you child, you don't understand anything, you don't know anything, all you do is eat and play, you don't study, what will you do in the future, how will you support yourself in society, how will you face the future—and on and on it starts.

Think about it, think carefully: isn't everything you're instilling in your child entirely negative, and about things in the future that haven't even happened yet? Do you really think these things will actually happen? Look around you today—leaving aside those extremely impoverished regions of Africa—in the life around you, among the people you know, who has starved to death? Since no one has, why do you paint such terrifying pictures for your child? It's as if unless the child studies hard and brings home a few A's, he has no face to eat, no face to stay in this family, doesn't deserve to be your child, doesn't deserve to be a member of the family. With all your methods—whether telepathy, or language, or body language, or hints, or direct statements—isn't this the kind of concept you're transmitting to your child? That's why there are children who do poorly on exams and then directly commit suicide, because you instilled in them this concept of "you don't deserve to live."

Many parents don't understand why their child committed suicide. There are too many such cases, too cruel, so I won't cite specific examples. I've been in contact with many, many people who come to ask about this kind of problem: a perfectly fine child, in middle school, high school, or college, becomes depressed, becomes schizophrenic, and some really do commit suicide. A young life, in their teens, life hasn't even begun yet, life hasn't yet had such beautiful, splendid experiences, hasn't yet enjoyed anything, and they want to die. Think about how utterly disappointed they must be in this world, in life, in this family, in their parents—they no longer have even a shred of will to live. You can imagine for yourself what kind of spiritual torment such parents and such families inflicted on the child. At an age when a teenager should be bouncing with energy and full of hope and longing for life, they choose death, and it's because of this core belief—the views your parents instilled in you, the views society instilled in you, and then you pass them on to your child: you must find value and meaning for your existence, otherwise you don't deserve to live in our family, don't deserve to live in society, don't deserve to be a member of the human race. You must find the meaning of existence.

Where do you expect him to find it? Let me ask you, have you found it? You push your child every single day. Have you found it? You've now lived to thirty, forty, fifty, twenty years old—tell me where your value and meaning of existence are. You haven't even found it yourself, so why are you forcing your child to carry such a thing when he's only in his teens? He simply doesn't have it.

Look at what Seth says:

And various core beliefs will be built up around this belief.

Around this unnatural, unnecessary, yet universally held belief, a whole series of beliefs gets established: you must study hard, you must work hard, you can't waste your time, an inch of time is an inch of gold, an inch of gold cannot buy an inch of time—one after another they come.

Then other beliefs are used to hide this inner sense of insecurity.

The moment you think you have no value in existing, this sense of insecurity wells up, and since you don't dare face it, you fabricate other external beliefs—saying everyone must have meaning, must contribute to society, must strive hard, must study, and so on—fabricating a whole series of other beliefs to hide this original belief. This original core belief is: you must find value for your existence, you must justify your existence, why should I be alive.

You may rationalize your life through having children, and then you tie your children to you and never want to let them go.

Seth's words are always so refined. But how much of this exists in real life? Observe carefully: your parents, and now you—if you have children—don't you all have this same concept? You treat having children as a justification for your existence: you gave birth to a child, so now you have a reason to live in this world, to live for the child. Because now you have a reason to live, because the child is still young, you have to take care of him and raise him to adulthood, and all of a sudden your whole life seems to have meaning.

When you had a child in your twenties, you yourself couldn't find the meaning of life, and you insisted on pinning that meaning onto the child—isn't that just deceiving yourself? When your own life had no meaning, you muddled through your twenties knowing nothing, found someone, got married, had a child, and the moment the child was born you discovered your life suddenly had meaning—how naive. And then you deceive the child by saying, child, everything I do is for your own good. You're not doing it for the child's good; the child is doing it for your good—without the child, you couldn't find the value and meaning of your existence, and your entire life would lose all meaning.

So many people are like this. Look: when the child grows up, gets married, leaves home, the most lost ones are the parents. The child is excited, rushing toward a new life; but under the telepathic influence and suggestion of parents like you, the moment the child gets married they immediately have a child too, and discover their own life is tied down by the child again. If you pass this down from generation to generation, then where is your value and meaning? If you look at it from a higher dimension, how naive and laughable it is. Think carefully: are you living like an animal? You seem to be searching for the value and meaning of life, but actually those are all excuses; you simply don't understand where the value and meaning of human existence lie.

This is what Seth is pointing out to you. His words are refined; my words are harsher—but that's the meaning. I'm telling you directly what Seth didn't say outright. How many parents, especially mothers—fathers are a bit better, but they have it too—treat having a child as the biggest thing in the world, and then your own life is gone, everything revolves around the child. The child is your everything, your sky, your earth, your world. Isn't that just fooling yourself?

Perhaps you can substitute a career instead. Some people don't use children as a substitute; I have no children, I'm part of the DINK crowd, I don't want children, I want to build a career, to make my career especially successful—same thing. Working day and night, work is dearer than father or mother, as long as there's work, as long as you achieve success, stand out, and make others envy you, that's enough.

But in these cases, you must catch hold of these unnecessary beliefs.

These beliefs are all unnatural, unnecessary; you don't need any of this.

Face the reality of biological nature.

You have two basic attributes: you have a spiritual, psychic side, and you also have a biological side. If you dare to face the biological side of yourself directly—acknowledging that the biological attribute is also one of the most important parts of your entire personality, with the other part being your spiritual attribute—then you must understand one principle: in the universe, you have exactly the same standing as a squirrel, an ant, or a leaf.

A squirrel never asks where the value and meaning of its existence lie, an ant never asks, a flower never asks, a leaf never asks, a tree never asks, a stone never asks. Why is it that only humans must find value before they can live in this world? Don't those flowers and plants live? Don't those little animals live? Go ask them: what is the meaning of your life, where is your value, what is your philosophy of life? Nothing. And yet aren't they living perfectly well?

This is an inevitable basic attribute of existing as a biological being. In other words, your existence in this world is itself receiving the grace of the entire world. You don't need any reason to live joyfully in this world, blessed by grace; you don't need any additional reason. Just like a flower, a little squirrel, a little cat, or a little dog living happily—this is a basic right you are naturally endowed with. You don't need to keep finding reasons and excuses for yourself.

From this angle, Seth is saying you don't need to justify your own existence. If you can think this question through clearly, I think it can completely release the burden that many people have carried on their backs for decades.

You have no question about their right to exist.

You have no question about these little squirrels, leaves, and flowers. Have you ever questioned their right to exist? You never have. Then why do you doubt yourself? They all have the right to live, so why don't you have the right to live? They have the right to enjoy the air and sunshine in this world, to live freely, and heaven provides for them—you never see an animal starve itself to death; they have their own ways of survival. Why is it that you, as the highest creature among humans, a primate, are always tormenting yourself? Why don't you properly enjoy your life instead of tormenting yourself every day? Asking yourself why you're alive—isn't this a perfect example?

Jane's Sensory Experience

Seth said that was the end of our passion session. He knew the word "passion" had a double meaning -- one was that Jane's feelings were very passionate, and Jane was super sensitive tonight; the other was that his content was also super passionate. An hour after it ended, Jane was still describing her rich sensory experience -- even the feeling of the bedsheet rubbing against her body was almost too much for her to bear. You can imagine how sensitive her body had become. Later we will explain why Jane had such feelings.

Session 646

A Letter to That Woman

The last tail of Chapter 11 is very short, so let us finish it. Just yesterday (Session 646), Jane received a letter from a woman. This woman described how a few years ago she began to feel a special, transcendent love for all humanity. In the letter, the woman said that this extremely deep feeling was still continuing, and was well controlled, but she had not told anyone about it, and then she wondered whether she could ask Seth what the meaning of this experience was. In addition, she had also received a medical verdict -- the doctor had given her a verdict, saying that she had a serious illness and might die within a year or two. Besides expressing sympathy, Jane also felt that this letter stirred up some of her own psychic experiences, and she asked Rob to put the letter in the Seth notes and ask Seth to answer. Many people will be interested in Seth's answer.

After dinner, Jane felt tired and had not wanted to hold the session, but the neighbors could not get their door open, so they went to help solve it. After solving it, Jane's energy came back, and the session began. At this point Seth said:

When you allow emotions to flow spontaneously, they will never overwhelm you, but will always return you refreshed to logical conscious thought.

What Seth means is that if you allow this kind of emotion or feeling to flow freely, it will not swallow you up, drown you in emotion, and leave you completely without rational control, as you might think. He says it will not. It will always return you refreshed to rational, logical thought.

But when you block emotions, then they appear to conflict with reason.

When you feel overwhelmed by emotion or feeling, it is often because you have blocked that emotion. When you block it, the emotion, like water behind a dam, gathers higher and higher, and finally overflows the dam and destroys all your defenses of reason. When you let it flow freely, it will bring you back to reason; when you block it, it will crush the whole person.

It is highly important that you understand the directing power of the conscious mind.

You must believe in the directing power of the conscious mind, otherwise you will believe that you can never control conditions and circumstances. If you do not believe in the directing energy of the conscious mind, you will believe that you cannot control the outer world and circumstances, and everything will be out of control. Why? Because you do not believe that the conscious mind can control your emotions.

Again, while the conscious mind is meant to direct the flow of your experience through your beliefs, and then materialize it.

The conscious mind is originally meant to direct the flow of your experience through your beliefs, and to realize it, to manifest it, to manifest it in reality. For example, if you think, I want to realize something, and finally you experience that thing, this is called manifestation.

But the actual mechanisms are automatically taken care of by other portions of yourself.

This process of manifestation does not require you to do it. You only need the conscious mind to direct according to your beliefs, and the other portions -- that is, your inner self -- will automatically do it for you. You must believe that your new beliefs are just as fully effective as your old beliefs. Your present surrounding environment was created by your old beliefs, including the parts you are satisfied with and the parts you are not. You must believe that after you replace these old beliefs with new beliefs, those new beliefs will just as effectively produce the kind of outer environment and experience you want in the future. Your present surrounding environment was formed by old beliefs, so you should believe that once your new beliefs change, the outer environment will change accordingly.

He paused for a long time, and then Seth said:

You may think that your religious beliefs have little to do with your health and daily experience.

Those who have left organized religion -- people who have left the church, left Buddhism, left Islamic groups -- may feel that they cannot accept those influences that you consider untrustworthy, and you feel that once you have left them, you will not be affected by them, such as the negative suggestions of original sin.

No one, however, is without some kind of belief in that area.

He made a turn. In the area of belief, whether or not you believe in religion, or whichever religion you enter, those visible churches and so on, whether you are inside them or not, they all have an influence on your health and daily experience. You say, I am not in a church, I have never been to any church, I have never believed in any religion, or even if I once believed and have now left, it has no influence on me -- he says that is not so. On the level of belief, you are all affected by these influences. You say, I have no belief, I do not believe in any religion -- atheism is also a kind of belief. In other words, within this core belief system, a person definitely has his or her own beliefs.

In the next chapter we will go deeply into the ideas you hold about good and evil and your own moral values, and examine the ways in which your own ideas are reflected in your life.

Then he addressed the woman who wrote the letter -- the woman who held a transcendent love for all humanity and then was going to die within a year or two -- with the following passage. This passage is a partial summary and overview of the whole of Seth's thought. He said that now he would give that woman a short letter.

No man or woman consciously knows the day of death, the last day.

Why? Because birth and death are the natural framework of expression of the soul in the flesh. Between birth and death is contained earthly experience -- it occurs within a set period of time, which we treat as a span of several decades, experienced through different seasons, and involving specific regions within the range of space -- for example, you live in Shanghai or Beijing, with unique perceptions within a specific time range, and encounters with other human beings.

These are all shared with you to a greater or lesser degree, a world formed by the intersection of the self with time and space.

Every person is intersecting with other people, and within this span of time from birth to death, the encounters with other human beings, to a greater or lesser degree, all have overlapping parts in your world, and each has independent parts. Each person forms his or her own world, so within this world that each person forms, there are overlapping parts. Each person is equivalent to an independent world, but where it intersects with other people, there are overlapping parts. You will have such intersections with them to a greater or lesser degree, forming such a world.

So birth and death have their function within this time and space.

What kind of function? They intensify and focus your attention. From the physical point of view, because there is death, your life seems more precious, that is, it makes you feel that life is truly precious -- a person has only one life. We have been taught this since childhood. Why? To make us cherish life. It is because there is death that you cherish life. If you were told you would never die, you would not cherish it.

Perhaps it is precisely because you do not know on which day death may come that it seems better for you.

You do not know when you will die, so is it not easier to live? If you were told in which year you would die -- for example, you will live to 78, to 65, you will die at 24, an accident may happen at 16 -- then would you not live like someone sentenced to a fixed term, like a prisoner sentenced to death awaiting execution? That is why you are not allowed to know the day of your death. This is all by design. Of course, on the unconscious level, everyone actually knows -- the bottom layer of your body, the deepest level of consciousness, knows the day of your death, but that knowledge is hidden, and the conscious you is not allowed to know it. One reason is that you do not need to know it, and another is that you could not bear it. But your unconscious knows.

Usually for many reasons this knowledge is hidden, but the fact of personal death is never forgotten.

The fact that everyone will die is never forgotten. No one forgets that he or she will die in the future.

Now without the knowledge of death, man could not fully enjoy life within earthly reality.

Within this framework of birth and death, without death, a person could not fully enjoy life. Therefore death is necessary.

In this existence, you have been given a fuller opportunity than ever before to study life and to experience it.

Experience your life, its intensity and splendor, its contrasts and similarities, its joys and sorrows, all here for you to perceive.

Your eyes have been opened by the doctor's pronouncement.

The doctor has pronounced that you have only a year or two to live, but your true eyes have only now opened. You came here to experience life.

Now I tell you, that intensification is for you to understand and appreciate.

What is meant by intensification is that this death itself is also a kind of intensification. The doctor has already pronounced that she will die, and this itself is also a kind of intensification.

And the experience of life and living is also unconditionally accepted, and can bring you another birth within this life.

You die, and new life will be born -- within this life, death brings a new birth.

In which the doctor's pronouncement has no meaning.

As far as the psyche is concerned, the death sentence pronounced upon you is another opportunity in life, an opportunity for new birth. For your body it is indeed a death sentence, but for your psyche, it is another opportunity in life.

If you can freely accept life, with all of its conditions, and feel all of its aspects, then the psyche and the body can restore themselves to vitality.

Its conditions are that where there is birth there is death, and death itself is also a condition. If you can accept life in this way, accept these basic conditions of birth and death, and feel them, then your psyche and your body will restore their vitality -- that is to say, if you can calmly accept all of this, your body will also get better, and it is not necessarily the case that you will die within a year or two.

The experience you wrote about in your letter is important on several levels.

He answered her, what is the meaning of it?

Because you fully know the things that will happen, so that experience was originally meant to set your mind at ease.

That experience was meant to tell you, on the emotional and psychic levels, of the great significance of each individual, to show the lovely splendor inherent in every human being, and to let you know that the integrity of yourself and your soul exists beyond the possibility of total destruction.

Just as you yourself will continue to exist -- no matter which path you choose, whether you die within two years or continue to live for many years, it is all the same, you will always exist forever. And within that love you felt -- this woman said at the beginning that she felt a transcendent love for all humanity -- you will find fulfillment in this love. Fulfillment in the love you felt. What kind of fulfillment? Your life will be eternally immortal -- the life referred to here is the life of your soul.

You had unconsciously felt that you were drifting, and that life was dull.

Actually you felt that life was meaningless, and that is why you would die. Beneath the surface of events, you felt dissatisfied.

You felt that you had great courage, but no opportunity to use it.

You felt that you had all kinds of abilities, that you could stand between heaven and earth, that you could save humanity, but you never had the opportunity to use them. There were no heroic episodes, your life had always been plain, even somewhat dull. There was no such thing -- no heroic thing for you to fully understand, no real impetus to lift you up, or to bring excitement into your days.

Therefore, the unconscious you chose a situation.

At this time you yourself did not know it, and suddenly a crisis arose -- you were going to die, you could only live for another year or two. At this point every day of life became meaningful.

To arouse all of the greatest elements of the heart and soul, so that they must strive to understand, to perceive, to triumph.

Because death was imminent, there were only one or two years of life left to live.

Therefore you will do those things in whatever way is most important to you. You will no longer waste your life, and you will learn more, and be more fulfilled.

Although there are only one or two years, it is very fulfilling, better than if the situation had not been activated -- that is, better than the previous dull and boring days. Although heaven has only given you one or two years of life, it is still better than the decades of dull life you had before, because you have found more passion, more drive, to perceive, to triumph.

This does not mean that you did not have other choices in the past.

You chose today's situation because in your past life you were so afraid of death that you tried not to think about it. This time, you have placed it at the very front of your attention. There is no way around it -- the doctor has pronounced it, and you used to pretend not to see it, afraid of death and not wanting to think about it, but now you cannot escape it -- it is right in front of your attention, like a sign placed on the front windshield of a car, your life has begun its countdown.

Within the entire framework of your existence, this life is such a brilliant, eternally unique, and precious part, but only a part.

This life of yours is only a part of your entire entity. From it you emerge with joy and understanding, whether you die tomorrow or a few years from now.

The choice of life and death is always yours.

What he means is that the reason you are now going to die within a year or two is that your inner, unconscious inner self chose it. Because it felt that your life had become too dull, too boring; you had such great aspirations, such strong abilities, even this transcendent love for humanity, but no opportunity to exercise them, to release them, and there were no heroic scenes, no such stimulating events, and no need for you to save the world. What do you do then? You create for yourself the statement -- I will die in two years. At this point you begin to act, you immediately realize that your life is about to end, and since you have these thoughts and this transcendent love for humanity, you will definitely take action. So the last sentence of this passage -- the choice of life and death is always yours, it is you who chose to die within these one or two years, not someone else who gave it to you.

Yet life and death are but two faces of your eternal, ever-changing existence.

Life and death are the two faces of your eternal, ever-changing existence -- which is actually your soul. Life and death: death means new life, and life means certain death.

Feel and appreciate the joy of your own existence.

Feel it and appreciate it. You must appreciate both life and death. Death is also a kind of appreciation.

Many people live into their nineties, but never appreciate to what extent the beauty of their existence.

They never feel that their existence in this world is so beautiful. This whole letter he wrote is like poetry, like prose.

You have lived, and you will live again, and in your terms, your new life springs from your old life, and grows within it, and is contained within it.

Your new life is contained within the old life. The old does not go, the new does not come, just as the flower already contains the seed -- although the flower blooms and will wither, within the flower is nurtured the seed of new life, and new life will be born from this withered or dead flower.

Wherever we are, we are a traveler, and as one traveler to another, I salute you.

This is the end of the letter. This last passage is extremely poetic, and you must understand it repeatedly -- whether on this earth of ours, or on the level of our souls, or in outer space, on other planets, or on other levels of consciousness, we are all travelers. You, me, him, every one of us is a traveler. As one traveler, to you -- another traveler -- I salute you.

All right, the content of Chapter 11 has now been fully completed. Starting tomorrow, we will introduce and interpret the content of Chapter 12. I salute you as well.

注释与核实

1. This claim could not be verified. ↩

2. Source: Wumen Huikai, The Gateless Gate, Case 3, "Juzhi Raises a Finger" (Taishō T48n2005) (https://tripitaka.cbeta.org/T48n2005_001) ↩

3. This claim could not be verified. ↩

4. This claim could not be verified. ↩

5. Source: Wikipedia, "Follow Your Feelings" (https://zh.wikipedia.org/zh-hans/%E8%B7%9F%E8%91%97%E6%84%9F%E8%A6%BA%E8%B5%B0) ↩

6. Source: Wikipedia, "Show Lo" (https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Show_Lo) ↩

7. Source: Wikipedia, "Eternal Love (Chinese TV series)" (https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Eternal_Love_(Chinese_TV_series)) ↩

8. This claim could not be verified. ↩

9. Source: American Astronomical Society (AAS), "This Month in Astronomical History: The Discovery of Neptune" (https://aas.org/posts/story/2017/09/month-astronomical-history-discovery-neptune) ↩

10. This claim could not be verified. ↩

11. Source: International Astronomical Union, "IAU 2006 General Assembly: Result of the IAU Resolution votes" (https://www.iau.org/IAU/Iau/News/PR2006/iau-2006-general-assembly-resolution-votes.aspx) ↩

12. Source: Encyclopaedia Britannica, "One-child policy" (https://www.britannica.com/topic/one-child-policy) ↩

13. Source: Encyclopaedia Britannica, "Carly Fiorina | Biography, HP, Politics, & Facts" (https://www.britannica.com/biography/Carly-Fiorina) ↩

14. Source: Apple, "Apple Leadership — Deirdre O'Brien" (https://www.apple.com/leadership/deirdre-obrien/) ↩

15. Source: Jane Roberts, Psychic Politics: An Aspect Psychology Book (1976) (https://openlibrary.org/books/OL4890737M/Psychic_politics) ↩

16. Source: Wikipedia, "The Oversoul Seven Trilogy" (https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/The_Oversoul_Seven_Trilogy) ↩