Mike's commentary · The Nature of Personal Reality, Chapter 3

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

Introduction

Thoughts have an electromagnetic reality. Beliefs are intense thoughts that trigger emotions and attract thoughts of a similar kind. The ego is a part of the whole self, a constantly changing surface identity responsible for focusing on physical reality and screening inner and outer data; it cannot cut off inner information, but it can ignore data that does not fit its beliefs. Limiting beliefs distort reality, and telepathic data is also screened according to conscious beliefs. Core beliefs are the foundation upon which a life is built. They can be changed by making a list of personal beliefs and examining and replacing them the way one would examine and replace furniture. Imagination is the medium that drives beliefs into experience.

Key Points of This Chapter

• Thoughts have electromagnetic reality; beliefs are intense thoughts that trigger emotions and attract similar thoughts.
• The ego is a part of the whole self, a constantly changing surface identity responsible for focusing physical reality and screening inner and outer data.
• The ego cannot cut off information from the conscious mind, but it can ignore data that does not fit its beliefs.
• Limiting beliefs cause a person to receive only experiences consistent with them, distorting reality; examples include "there is never enough money," "I am too sensitive," "human nature is inherently evil," and "life has no value."
• Core beliefs are the foundation upon which one builds one's life; they can be changed by listing one's personal beliefs and examining and replacing them as if they were furniture; imagination is the medium that drives beliefs into experience.

Main Text

Chapter 3: Suggestion, Telepathy, and the Grouping of Beliefs

Seth stated the title of this chapter: suggestion, telepathy, and the grouping of beliefs.

Ideas have an electromagnetic reality. Beliefs are strong ideas about the nature of reality. Ideas generate emotion. Like attracts like, so ideas of a similar nature group together, and you selectively accept those that fit in with your particular system of thought.

He says here that ideas themselves carry a certain electromagnetic reality; they are something that truly exists. A belief is a strong idea, a strong conviction about the nature of reality. Ideas generate emotion, and this point must be noted. Because like attracts like, ideas of a similar nature group together. Your ideas constantly attract things that resemble themselves, so ideas are extremely important. If you always have bad ideas, negative ideas, then you will always attract similar ideas to you.

The ego seeks to maintain clear focus and stability so that it can precisely direct the conscious mind toward the areas it wants to notice, and concentrate upon those various physical manifestations that appear to have permanent effects.

The ego must maintain focus and stability. What does stable focus mean? It means that seemingly stable material world, directing the conscious mind toward the places it wants to notice, and then concentrating its attention, focusing its energy on those various physical manifestations that appear on the surface to have permanent effects, that is, concentrating on the material level. In one simple sentence, the ego concentrates its focus on the material level, on the material level that the conscious mind wants to notice.

The ego, though a part of the whole self, is also considered a psychological structure, a surface identity formed by taking certain characteristics from the overall personality of an individual and combining them.

The ego is a part of the whole self, a part of the whole self, but it is also a psychological structure, a surface identity formed by taking certain characteristics from the overall personality of an individual and combining them, called in English a surface identity. This is somewhat like the French word facade, something like a front, a surface identity. To put it simply, your ego selectively draws out certain characteristics from your whole self, and in a particular environment or a particular period, or in a particular state, it will display a different surface identity.

Let me give an example. Some girls, before they get married, are like little girls, especially delicate and lovely; after marriage they face a series of problems as a housewife, daily necessities, relations with in-laws; after having children they become mothers; when getting along with their husbands they are wives. She switches among these different identities without any effort, without any sense of dissonance, very naturally. Under these different identities, she is actually using different characteristics of her own whole self. Your whole self is a complete entity with all kinds of abilities, but your ego, under different surface identity states, draws out different characteristics and combines them into a surface identity. This surface identity appears to be relatively continuous and stable over a certain period of time, but if you carefully look back over the development of your own life, you will find that your identity has actually been changing all along, from a small child to going to school, elementary school student, middle school student, then having friends, having a social nature, step by step, the identity keeps changing, and a person's whole life is one continuous transformation.

Generally speaking, this combination over the course of a person's life allows the abilities of his many tendencies to emerge more easily. Without such a combination, a person's various potentials would have no chance to come to the fore at all.

This combination is very important; without this combination, a person would be rather rigid, stubborn, and inflexible. If it were not for the surface identity formed by this combination, your interests would never change over your entire life, and you would have very little variability. For example, if a girl has never been a mother, she will never discover that she has maternal characteristics within her. She never knows she has this ability and potential in this area, until one day she becomes a mother herself, and then she discovers that she actually has such powerful maternal love within her. The process of changing from a woman into a mother is quite obvious, but in fact it is the same in many other processes. If it were not for this, you would not be able to discover some of your own potentials; only under this special identity, under this kind of combination, can you discover your different abilities.

This ego, which appears never to change, is in fact changing constantly, moment by moment. It continually adapts to new characteristics coming from the whole self, and continually puts aside others that are no longer needed. If it did not do so, it would be utterly unable to respond to the various needs and desires that constantly rise and fall within the overall personality of an individual.

The ego appears never to change, but in fact it is changing constantly, moment by moment. It continually adapts to new characteristics coming from the whole self, and it does not know how these things come. Before you became a mother, who would teach you how to be a mother? Did you take a class or a training course on how to be a good mother? No one taught you, no one taught you how to be a mother, and yet you knew how. No one taught you how to be a good husband or a good wife, and yet you knew how. Many of these things are inherent within you from the start; they are characteristics of your whole self, and these characteristics are simply combined according to your choices. It also continually puts aside others that are no longer needed; as you grow, as the environment changes, as roles change, it will let go of some characteristics that are no longer used, no longer possess them, no longer carry them. If it did not do so, it would be unable to respond to various needs and desires, because each person's needs are constantly changing in the course of overall development.

The ego is so intimately connected with the other portions of the self that basically it has no sense of loneliness or alienation. On the contrary, it proudly plays the role of directing the focus of the conscious mind.

The ego is so intimately connected with the other portions of the whole self that basically it has no sense of loneliness or alienation. On the contrary, it proudly plays the role of directing the focus of the conscious mind. In the example given in the previous session, the conscious mind is like a very large camera, and the ego is the person operating that camera, telling it, look here, look here, guiding it. From this perspective, the ego is an accessory of the conscious mind, the person who helps adjust the camera.

Basically the ego is well aware of its own nature and origin. It is also the outward-looking part of a person's mind. It constantly looks outward, and then, using the various characteristics that compose it at the time as a standard, it examines what it sees in physical reality. It can also make judgments according to the various ideas it holds about itself.

The ego is very clear about its own nature and origin, and it is also the outward-looking part of a person's mind, responsible for facing outward. It constantly looks outward, and then, using the various characteristics it has obtained from the whole self at the time as a standard, it examines what it sees in physical reality. It can also make judgments according to the various ideas it holds about itself, that is, beliefs. The ego is the most materially oriented part of your inner self, but it has not separated from your inner self; it is merely inclined toward the material. It can also be said that this ego sits on the windowsill between you and the outside world; it can look in both directions at the same time, both inward and outward. It makes judgments about reality according to its own needs and yours. It decides whether to accept beliefs. The ego has its own needs; this is something you must understand, the ego has its own needs.

The ego cannot cut off the information coming to you from the conscious mind, but it can ignore it.

The ego cannot cut off the information coming to you from the conscious mind, but it can ignore it. This ego of yours can both see the inner information coming from the inner self through the conscious mind, and perceive the outer world. Its main function is to perceive the outer world, but it also knows about the inner world. You cannot cut it off, saying I just will not listen to inner things; you cannot sever this connection. This connection is that it sits on the windowsill and can see both sides, so information naturally flows to it. But it cannot cut off this information; however, it can ignore it, not pay attention to this information, not place its focus on it, not attend to this inner information. That is possible.

Ignoring it does not mean that this information cannot be known by you. It is merely shelved, so to speak, not digested and absorbed, and not incorporated into the belief system you are focusing upon today. But if you set out to look for it, it is there.

Ignoring it does not mean that this information cannot be known by you. It is merely shelved, placed somewhere unimportant, not digested and absorbed, and not incorporated into the belief system you are focusing upon today. But if you set out to look for it, it is there. The information coming from the inner self has always been here; it has not been lost.

It has not vanished into thin air. Nor do you necessarily have to know what you are looking for in order to find it. If that were truly necessary, then your chances of finding it would be practically zero.

The conscious mind has not vanished into thin air, nor do you necessarily have to know what you are looking for in order to find it. It is not a thing, nor is it something you can go and find. If you really try to find it, looking for it as if looking for an object, then you truly will find nothing at all. What do you need to do? You need to make up your mind to examine the contents of the conscious mind. You can examine its contents, but if you say I want to go find what the conscious mind is, that is like the eye saying I want to go look at the eye. Without the aid of a mirror, the eye can never see the eye. Using your conscious mind, you can never find your conscious mind, but you can examine the contents within this conscious mind and understand that it indeed contains treasures you have overlooked.

Another method is to recognize through examination that the physical effects encountered in the outside world actually exist within your conscious mind in the form of data. And the data that previously seemed unavailable will become quite obvious.

Another method is to recognize through examination that the physical effects you encounter in the outside world, that is, the things you encounter in real society or in the material world, actually first exist within your conscious mind in the form of data, that is, in a nonphysical form. So the data you previously could not obtain, you only need to look outward, look at your physical effects, and you will know what this data is; this data will become quite obvious.

Know that those seemingly invisible ideas that cause you difficulty actually have very obvious and visible physical effects. And these in turn automatically bring you back to the area of consciousness where the original belief or idea is hidden.

Those seemingly invisible ideas that cause you difficulty actually have very obvious and visible physical effects. You cannot see the deep-level thoughts or beliefs that cause your current difficulties, because to you they are like transparent things, because you treat them as facts. When you cannot see them, just look at your outer world; when you look at your outer world you will understand that the difficulties arising in your outer world, or the current predicaments, are actually all caused by certain beliefs and thoughts within you. When you see the physical effects outside, they will bring you back to the original conscious mind that caused this outer reality. You can sense it from both directions: one is to see the contents within the conscious mind, and the other is to look at your outer environment and see that it is something projected by the conscious mind.

Again, if you want to easily perceive what you are thinking, these thoughts themselves will give you clues, because they can clearly state your beliefs.

He emphasizes once more, if you want to easily perceive what you are thinking, these thoughts themselves will give you clues, because they can clearly state your beliefs. Your thoughts will tell you, only you do not pay attention to them. If you carefully probe into them, you will immediately discover what causes you to have such a thought right now.

Limiting Beliefs: Never Enough Money and Resentment of the Rich

If you never have enough money, when you examine your thoughts, you may find that you often think to yourself: I can never afford this bill.

If you always feel you never have enough money, when you examine your thoughts, you may find that you often think this way: I can never afford this bill. For example, when you see someone driving a sports car roaring past on the road, do you ever think in your heart that you could buy one too? Or do you think to yourself, I could never afford that car? When you walk past a beautiful big villa, a garden house, do you think to yourself, I could never afford something like that? Because you think this way, you say, I have never had anything to do with good luck. I am always a poor wretch -- well, no one actually thinks that. No one thinks, I myself will always be a poor wretch; very few people actually think that. But you are in fact suggesting to yourself that you are a person without money. Perhaps you will find that you envy those who are richer than you, and you may even go further and devalue money itself. You will also envy those who are richer than you -- a mentality of resenting the rich.

Everyone in this society has this kind of resentment toward the rich. The simplest example: a piece of social news we saw a couple of days ago. In China, there is a very popular livestream seller named Li Jiaqi. If you have watched livestreams, you know Li Jiaqi. He started out selling lipstick on livestreams, and later sold all kinds of things, doing product promotion. He was extremely good at it, and he was also a very good person, a very nice person. But because this person became an internet celebrity and made a lot of money from product promotion, a couple of days ago in Shanghai he apparently spent tens of millions, or fifty million -- I forget -- buying a house. Then this news got dug up, and after it was dug up, everyone's reaction to him immediately turned bad. People started slandering him everywhere, trashing him, and all sorts of people started finding ways to trash him.

There was also another piece of news a couple of days ago. During our pandemic, during the pandemic in China, who was the individual who donated the most money? Not a celebrity, not a sports star, not an entertainment star, not any entrepreneur, not Jack Ma, not Wang Jianlin. It was a young man who does livestreaming. This young man is probably only thirty years old this year. His name is Xin Youzhi -- Xin as in "hardworking," Youzhi as in "having ambition." This young man is a rural kid who worked his way up step by step through livestreaming to where he is today. He selects products for everyone, and after selecting the products himself, he does livestream product promotion. Then during the pandemic, he personally donated 150 million yuan in one go¹, and he posted the details of his donation. When he first said it, everyone thought he was bragging, talking nonsense. Then he posted his transfer records, and everyone said, hey, you only transferred fifty million. Then he told everyone that the bank's maximum daily transfer limit is fifty million. He said he would complete the transfer over three days, and later he posted all three days of transfer records. He donated 100 million to the Red Cross or somewhere, and then spent another fifty million setting up a new foundation of some kind. In total he donated 150 million, and all the remittance records were there. And this very person -- a couple of days ago, because he does product promotion on Kuaishou, Kuaishou removed him from the entire platform, took this person down from the internet. And now there is a flood of abuse directed at him. Before he made this donation, everything was fine. After he donated, there was a flood of abuse, and people dug up his entire history, all his problems, and so on.

What is the reason? The most fundamental reason is this society's resentment of the rich at work. Everyone feels that an internet celebrity earning a few hundred thousand -- that they can understand. If you do well, earning a few million is also acceptable. If you do especially well, earning over ten million is already impressive. But when they discover that someone can earn several hundred million a year, or over a billion, or several billion, ordinary people cannot take it. Ordinary people feel this is unacceptable; they cannot accept that an internet celebrity can earn this much money. They will not think of ways to earn that much money themselves; their approach is to attack him. Li Jiaqi later wrote a blog post. He said something -- I roughly remember, I cannot recall exactly -- his meaning was that he never expected this. He said, I never imagined that this society's hatred toward me could be so great. I do not know why. What did I do wrong? He said, you only see me making money. He said, can you see that I have to work about fifteen to sixteen hours a day for my livestreams, and so on. He said, in order to sell lipstick, I nearly rubbed my lips raw applying lipstick, and my face was such and such. He said a lot -- his hardships, which other people cannot see. Before Li Jiaqi became popular, he spent three years doing livestreams with no one watching.² At that time he was not popular. For three years he did livestreams and no one watched at all; he had very few fans. But those three years trained him. In those three years he learned how to do a good livestream, how to keep those few limited fans around, how to interact with fans, and so on. Once he had developed these basic skills, when one day he suddenly became famous overnight, his actual ability then helped him further, which is why he was able to do so well afterward. Another reason is that his character is relatively good. Once, after a livestream ended, he forgot to turn off the camera. His mother called him to eat, and he forgot to turn it off. After the livestream ended, he went back to living an ordinary life -- eating when it was time to eat, doing whatever he needed to do. But the most crucial point is that after streaming for several hours and being so exhausted, he actually had no complaints or grumbling at all, including toward netizens and fans. He did not say anything negative, and everyone felt this person was decent. Many internet celebrities, after finishing a livestream and turning off the mic, will definitely say, ugh, I am exhausted, or express a lot of negative emotions and so on. He did not. He was very positive. That is the kind of person he is. But even a person like this, because of this state of resenting the rich, this mentality, is now facing a flood of abuse. So now Li Jiaqi and Xin Youzhi, these two relatively popular internet celebrities, have basically been completely overwhelmed by one-sided public opinion.

So it may even go further and devalue money itself. These are all problems we encounter in our daily lives. You tell yourself -- you also usually tell yourself that rich people are not happy. You hypnotize yourself, saying that they are spiritually impoverished. We are studying Seth, so rich people simply do not understand anything; they are all impoverished. This is our own psychological self-suggestion. How do you know that? So these are all unhealthy beliefs, and it is these beliefs that cause many people's poverty and financial hardship. This is the root cause, though they do not think so. So Seth says here: you only need to observe repeatedly. With just a little observation, you will know why you feel you never have enough money. It is not for any other reason; it is because of your own beliefs. It is all caused by these beliefs.

Speaking of this, I am reminded of a very famous story from America, something like a chicken-soup-for-the-soul story. It is about the richest Black man in America. This person is the wealthiest Black man. When he was young, his family conditions were extremely poor. His father was a drunkard who drank all the time, and when he came home drunk, he treated his mother and everyone in the family badly -- hitting the children and cursing his wife, or hitting his wife and cursing the children. In any case, the family was in all sorts of bad shape. His mother had never gone to school. Think about a Black family -- this was many years ago, decades ago, when he was a child. Later he worked hard and strove to improve himself, and in the end he became an extremely wealthy man, the richest among Black people. After he succeeded, when people asked him about it, he said that when he was very young, his mother said one thing to him, and that one thing was the reason he later walked the road to success. What she said was: your father -- the reason our family is so poor, the reason your father has been poor and miserable his whole life, is that he never once thought about living the life of a rich person. He did not even dare to imagine it. That is the root of it: his father did not even dare to imagine that he could live the life of a wealthy person. When I say this, actually, think about it carefully: do you dare to imagine it? Have you really dared to imagine living your ideal life? Have you thought about it? Do you slander them, smear them, look down on them from the bottom of your heart, despise them? Or do you admire them and learn from them? So here, what I want to say is this point. This is a very crucial point: the root of many of your problems lies in your beliefs.

When you find yourself thinking this way, you may say indignantly, But all of this is true. I really am poor. I really cannot pay my bills.

You still want to defend yourself. You say, it is not my thinking; this has nothing to do with my thinking. I really cannot pay my bills. My credit card still has a lot of debt I have not paid off. My monthly mortgage is crushing me. I still have many, many problems. He tells you, this is fact. Do not feed me this toxic chicken soup. I have had enough of this toxic chicken soup; it is meaningless. This is fact; I cannot change it. The facts are just like this: I cannot pay, I only have this much money in my account, and I owe that much money. So when you hear this, you can understand, right? You can understand that he regards this as fact, or many similar statements.

In so doing, you accept your belief about reality as a characteristic of reality itself. That belief becomes transparent and invisible to you. And it is the originator of your actual experience.

He always says "reality" here. Many people find the word "reality" hard to understand. What exactly is reality? To understand reality, just treat reality as our physical world, as your understanding of this world. When you see the word "reality," just think of it as our physical world; that makes it easier to understand. Or you can translate it as "the real world"; your understanding of the real world is the same thing. So when you do this, you accept your belief about reality, or your belief about this world, as a characteristic of reality itself, as if it were simply fact. That belief becomes transparent and invisible to you. What belief? The beliefs mentioned earlier: that kind of relationship, envying those richer than you, devaluing money, telling yourself rich people are not happy, and so on. You cannot see these things. What do you see? Facts. And "it" refers to those beliefs you cannot see, the beliefs that have become transparent. It is the originator of your actual experience -- the instigator. It is the root cause, but you cannot see it; it has become transparent.

You must change your beliefs. I will show you how.

Seth says, I will show you how, step by step, to change your beliefs.

Sensitivity Is Also a Limiting Belief

Another example: perhaps, while tracking your own thoughts, you will find yourself thinking that your difficulty lies in being too sensitive.

He gives another example, saying that your difficulty lies in being too sensitive, and many people have this kind of problem. This involves certain emotional issues, or problems in life. Some people, when they are in a relationship, if another colleague says something, they feel it is about themselves; when the boss says something in a meeting, they feel every sentence the boss says is about them, criticizing them. This kind of oversensitivity also appears in daily life, where if someone says something, they feel it is about themselves.

But that is also a belief, and a limiting one.

When you discover that you are especially sensitive in this way, you might say, but this is true, I really am like this, I have always had strong emotional reactions to small things. Many people say, I am just emotional, and many people say this all the time: I am just like this. Many girls have their own princess syndrome, or when they are being extremely difficult, they say, I am just like this, I cannot change. When I was little, my family was well off, and because my family was well off, I am emotional, I have princess syndrome, this is my advantage, my strong point. That is how she puts it. She says, if you like the ones without princess syndrome, go find them, go look at those, and she will say, look at those, this and that, she will list a bunch, look at those people, go find them. What she implies is that all the pretty ones have princess syndrome, and you should go find the ugly ones, they do not have princess syndrome. She hints at this, she tells other people. So he will say, oh, I am just like this. But that is also a belief, and a limiting one. If you trace it deeply, if you trace it directly downward, you will find that you think this way, you will find yourself thinking this way, thinking what? This sentimentality of mine is actually not bad, what is wrong with being sentimental, I have delicate feelings, what is wrong with being sensitive, it is quite good, it makes me stand out, it makes me different from others. You dull people, when I see flowers fall I weep, when I see leaves fall, I can compose a poem on the spot. That is my special talent, I am a literary young woman, so what, I am a literary youth, what of it, this is my advantage, I am not like you vulgar people. Many people have this kind of thought.

These are likewise all limiting beliefs. They will distort true reality, and they will distort the true reality of your own self.

He says, this world is not worthy of me, or rather, you have not discovered me, you have not discovered my good points, right, I am a thousand-li horse, but no talent scout has discovered me. I am so gifted, I am so talented, my talent overflows, yet none of you can see me, you only see my flaws. This world is simply not worthy, no one is worthy of me. A person as outstanding as I am has never been discovered, has never had a chance to rise, while other people, those vulgar people, those flashy people, those so-called internet celebrities, those surgically altered faces, how is it that someone as natural as me, as naturally beautiful as I am, has not become famous? How is it that those who had plastic surgery all became famous? All kinds of thoughts deep in the heart, feeling that this world is not worthy of him or her. These are likewise all limiting beliefs. They will distort true reality, and they will distort the true reality of your own self, the real facts, your real world. They distort your real world entirely.

The above are only a few examples showing that your quite conscious ideas may very well be invisible to you, yet they are always there, and they limit your experience.

He gives two examples, picking out these things that you ordinarily do not notice, yet they are always there, and they limit your experience. These experiences are all limiting, and they should all be cast aside.

The conscious mind is spontaneous and does not need to be checked at every moment

We have been discussing the conscious mind because it is the general director of all your activities in the physical world.

The reason we have been discussing this conscious mind is that it is very important in your personal life, in your personal world. His book is called The Nature of Personal Reality, so you can never get around the conscious mind.

I told you at the beginning of this chapter to understand the importance of the ego. The ego is the outermost part of the inner self, and it is not alienated, but looks outward toward physical reality. To use this analogy, the part of me that dwells on the other side of the conscious mind constantly receives telepathic data. So remember that in actuality there is no division; I say this only for the sake of discussion.

Here he circles back and rounds out this point again. What he means is that it seems as though there is an ego, and there is a conscious mind, and there is the inner self's data and the outer world, looking outward. It seems as though there are several levels or different parts, but what he is actually telling you is that there is no division at all; they are all one and the same thing. It is only for the sake of discussion that we have to divide them this way. You have to separate them first, right, before you can have a concept of the whole. If I said this is all you, and you are like this, and you are also like that, then you would get confused and not know what he is talking about. So he separates the part that looks inward and the part that looks outward, one part being the conscious mind, and another part being the ego. He separates them so that it is easier for you to understand, only for the sake of understanding. You must not take it too rigidly, and you must not treat it like studying academic physics or chemistry, trying to define exactly what the ego is, what the inner self is, what the id is, and drawing clear boundaries between them. That is not how it is. They are all mixed together.

The ego tries to organize all the data that enters the conscious mind. Because the purpose of the ego is to deal with whatever floats to the surface at any time when the "I" comes into contact with physical reality.

The ego has to organize all the data received by the conscious mind. The conscious mind receives from two directions: one is external, and one is internal. After the conscious mind collects data from both directions, the ego then has to organize them, and it tries to organize all of them. Because the purpose of the ego is to deal with whatever floats to the surface at any time when a whole self comes into contact with physical reality, and at that point the ego has to handle it. Be sure to remember that it is physical reality, and only then does it float to the surface.

As I have said, the ego cannot cut off the material coming from within, from the conscious mind, but it can refuse to focus directly upon it.

The ego cannot cut off this information coming from within. The ego organizes the data of the conscious mind, and the conscious mind receives both external and internal data. It cannot refuse the material coming from within, but it can say, I will not process it, I will not look at it, I will not manage it, I will not focus on it, I will ignore it.

To use our analogy, telepathic messages come from the ego's own deeper portions. The receiving ability of this portion is so astonishingly strong that there must be some organization to screen and filter this data. Because some of it is fundamentally irrelevant to you; it is data about people you do not know.

This kind of telepathic message definitely comes from the deeper portions. This receiving ability is actually very strong. You may feel as though you cannot receive much of anything telepathic from within, but actually it is very strong; you just do not notice it, because your ego does not place its attention there, so you look without seeing. Therefore you may feel as though there is nothing, but he says that in fact your receiving ability is extremely strong. Because some of it is fundamentally irrelevant to you, it has to be filtered out; it is data about people you do not know. Your inner self receives a great deal of this telepathic information. What is called telepathy is that when you come into contact with all people, without your awareness, they are all carrying on telepathic communication inwardly. And some of this communication is of no use to you. When you walk down the street and interact with people on the street, they are communicating inwardly with each other, but what does that have to do with you? Nothing, because in your everyday life you do not know them.

You are a sender and a receiver in telepathy. Because thoughts have an electromagnetic reality, and beliefs, as we know, because of their intensity, send out strong radiation. Due to the organizational structure of your own psychological nature, similar beliefs gather together, and you willingly accept those beliefs that you already agree with.

He repeats this point again, but he makes it on another level. In your unknowing state, in your unconscious state, your inner self is constantly using telepathy to communicate with the people around you. But much of the information that comes through this communication gathers together according to the principle of like attracting like. Therefore whatever beliefs you have, that is the kind of information it will gather; in other words, that is the kind of information it will pay attention to. It also receives other information, but it ignores it. You simply do not process it; you will only willingly accept those beliefs that you already agree with. So when you watch the news or read content, when you see things that do not match your values, you basically do not retain any deep impression; you just skim past them, and you do not even see them. Or the way you interpret them is also different from how others interpret them. I will not expand on this, because it is too complicated. Every piece of social news, different people see it, and different people interpret it completely differently.

Restrictive ideas, therefore, automatically cause you to accept similar concepts. In the same way, ideas that are filled with freedom, joy, and spontaneity automatically attract thoughts of the same kind.

These restrictive ideas automatically cause you to accept similar beliefs. Your restrictive ideas are like a sieve, and this sieve has a shape; it only accepts beliefs that match its shape, and those that do not match its shape are filtered out. In the same way, ideas that are filled with freedom, joy, and spontaneity automatically attract thoughts of the same kind. Good restrictive beliefs will also automatically receive restrictive beliefs. That is, we do not use the word negative; he uses the word restrictive, which means the same thing. These restrictive ideas automatically attract restrictive ideas. You see, right? That is how it is, and other people are like this too, everyone is like this. Look, I cannot pay my bills, and other people cannot pay their bills either. I am poor, and everyone else is poor too. We are all victims, we are all enslaved people. Above us there are those on high, and there are all kinds of interest groups, and on the surface there are governments, financial conglomerates, and they even fantasize about Freemasons, Illuminati, little gray aliens, extraterrestrials, managing the earth, ruling the earth. We are all ruled by them, we are suppressed layer by layer, we are the slaves at the very bottom, and so on and so forth. There are so many of these beliefs, extremely many. The key final point is always: I have no way, I cannot solve it, I can only be like this. All the reasons before that, no matter how many reasons are given, no matter what the reasons are, the conclusion is always one: I have no way, I cannot change, I am just like this. So why is it like this? Because his restrictive beliefs determine him. If you do not change this restrictive belief, you will forever receive only these restrictive thoughts. What you see, what you think, what you encounter, what you run into, what you hear, including what you think of, are all restrictive beliefs identical to your own. Because other beliefs simply cannot get in; you look without seeing. He has said so much, at such length, just to tell you this point: your beliefs determine what you see, what you hear, and what you accept. If you do not change your beliefs, then you can only see and hear this one kind of thing. This is one of the essences of the nature of personal reality: whatever you believe, whatever your beliefs are, you automatically attract thoughts that are the same as your beliefs.

There is an unending interaction between people, filled with all kinds of exchanges of thoughts, both conscious and telepathic. Again, this exchange is carried out according to your conscious beliefs.

There is an unending interaction between people, one that never stops, happening at every moment, filled with all kinds of exchanges of thoughts, exchanging at all times, both conscious and telepathic. One kind is when you interact with others, converse with them, through meetings, communication, chatting, sending messages, posting on social media, all kinds of ways of interacting with others; another kind is one you are completely unaware of, on the telepathic level, constantly communicating with the people around you, without any awareness at all. This exchange is carried out according to your conscious beliefs.

In certain circles there is a popular idea that no matter what your conscious beliefs and ideas are, you will react specifically to telepathically received information. But this is not the case. You will only react to telepathic information that matches your conscious ideas, and that fits with your views of yourself and of reality.

In certain circles there is a popular idea that no matter what your conscious beliefs are, you will react specifically to the information received through telepathy. But Seth emphasizes here that this is not the case. Be sure to remember this; this sentence is very important. He says this is wrong. What is actually true? You will only react to telepathic information that matches your conscious ideas, and that fits with your views of yourself and of reality. That is, when you engage in telepathy, what is very remarkable is that although telepathy is not controlled by your consciousness, it escapes your consciousness, it is beneath consciousness, seemingly having nothing to do with your thoughts anymore, seemingly having nothing to do with your conscious ideas, and nothing to do with your conscious beliefs either, because it is beneath your consciousness. Many people think that this kind of telepathy can operate without being controlled by your conscious beliefs. Seth says, wrong, this point is wrong. Even in your unconscious state, in the process of telepathically communicating with others, you will still only accept those viewpoints that match your conscious beliefs. Why? Think about why. It is not that you cannot receive other information; of course you can receive it. When you engage in telepathy, you receive all information. But when this information is passed up through your inner self's telepathic channel, and emerges through your conscious mind, when it reaches the level of your ego, does the ego not then come to inspect the contents of the conscious mind? As for the external contents of the conscious mind, we have already covered that. When this portion of information coming from inner telepathy is also sent up, it will only select those things that match the ego's beliefs, or match the ego's values, and accept them. Those that do not match its values or do not match its belief system, it simply looks past them all. Therefore, no matter what comes through telepathy, only those things that match your belief system will have any effect on you. It is not that you do not receive them; it is just that they do not take effect. You need to understand this: it is not that you do not receive them, and it is not that your telepathy is broken. Your telepathy is not broken; you received them, but you do not accept them, you do not approve of them, you look without seeing. So now you know how powerful your beliefs are, how formidable your beliefs are. So at this point someone says, we will give you suggestions. Many people say, I will give you suggestions, I will do a healing for you, I will use hypnosis, I will use other methods, to reach into your deeper layers. This is useless. The suggestions you give him, the things you give him, in the end still have to pass through his ego's sieve. Once they pass through the ego's sieve, only those things that match his belief system remain, and everything that does not match is completely ignored.

The conscious mind is spontaneous by nature. It likes to play, and it plays with its own contents. Therefore I do not suggest that you use a stern mental discipline, checking yourself at every moment. I only tell you that in areas of unsatisfactory experience, you can adopt therapeutic methods.

The conscious mind is spontaneous by nature. It likes to play, and it plays with its own contents. Therefore Seth does not suggest that we use a stern mental discipline, checking ourselves at every moment. Be sure to remember this. All that he said before, including the analysis of the conscious mind in Chapters 2 and 3, and the analysis of your value system and belief system, what is he doing? It is actually a kind of therapy. In the final analysis, it is a more thorough, more foundational method of psychological treatment that transcends modern psychology. You can understand it this way. In other words, only when you are dissatisfied with your current situation, when you feel that you need to change, only then can you use this method to examine your own beliefs and thoughts. You do not need to, in your daily life, at every moment, check every single thought, every arising thought, every belief system. If you do that, you will not be able to take a single step, and you will not be able to do anything at all. This thing is originally spontaneous; that is, the conscious mind is spontaneous. Do not manage it; just let it develop on its own. Only when? Only when you feel dissatisfied in certain areas, when you are deeply troubled by them, when this life experience is very painful for you, and you do not know what to do. Regarding a certain emotional relationship, regarding the development of your career, regarding the relationship between you and your company's employees and colleagues, regarding the relationship between you and other people, in all aspects, family relationships or any relationships. When in your life experience, in your life journey, there appear things that you need to adjust, only then should you use this method to give yourself a deep, foundational self-healing. Self-healing, what he means is that at this time you do not need to go find a psychologist; they cannot help you much anyway. At this time you heal yourself. How do you heal yourself? It is very simple: just look at what your beliefs actually are, carefully bring them into the open, and analyze them. If that does not work, then find a few people, a few people with similar interests, form a small group, and everyone analyzes each other. Sometimes others see your problems more clearly than you do. If you can do it yourself, then do it yourself; if you feel it involves your personal privacy and you do not want to share it with others, then you can also analyze it yourself. This is what he means here. So you must understand this clearly, and be clear about it: he is not telling you to do this at every moment, to engage in stern mental discipline at every moment. No one can endure that; do not do it that way. Here he is afraid that you will do it that way.

Jane's Trance State, Multiple Channels, and Willy

Seth asked whether they wanted a break, and he began to rest. This time Jane's trance state was again extremely deep; she did not know what she had said. At the same time, Jane said she believed that because this session continued from the previous one -- that is, the last session of the previous chapter -- he had divided it into two parts, because the first half of the previous chapter was very short, so this session was actually held on the same evening, the last part of Chapter Two, on the same evening. Then at this point she said Seth could write three books at the same time; this was Jane's feeling, and she believed it. She said each book one chapter at a time, never getting them mixed up. Now I feel this whole book is just there, waiting for me to speak it, or to have it written down. She also said her busy dream life had obviously done a great deal of preparation for this situation, but I did not ask her any questions that would open up more channels. That is, in the last session of the previous chapter, he talked about Jane having several channels, that she could also have three channels at the same time, and said that finally a fourth channel came in.

Then below is what Jane said: Since the Seth sessions began in 1963, I have never felt that such abundant material was available. And before this, I was never this open; I was never this open. This was Jane herself speaking. There was a lot of stuff there, but I could not accept it, because it did not agree with my beliefs. It was only at this point, when writing this section of the book, that Jane truly spoke her mind -- that is, before this Seth had actually given her a great deal of material that she had not accepted, that she could not accept. She said there were many things I could not accept. Why could she not accept them? Because they did not agree with her beliefs. Is what she said here the same as what Seth was going to talk about in this session? That is, Seth was speaking through Jane on a subconscious or deeper level. In this process, it seemed as though Jane was a person with no initiative at all -- that Seth said whatever he wanted to say. But she said that actually it did not seem to be that way. Jane had a great deal of power in this, which was that she was doing the filtering. Some beliefs that were completely inconsistent with her own -- she could not accept them, and she would not transmit them. So at this point Jane said, you see, I could not accept it, because her own limiting thoughts determined that. So in many of the earlier sessions and in much of the content, you know that some things were not because Seth did not say them, and not because Seth did not want to transmit this material; much of the reason was that Jane's ego beliefs at that time limited her and she did not accept it. These are her own words.

She said she pointed to her left, over here, and said, you see, among so many topics, I still managed to get material about archaeology -- absolutely incredible. That is, he could give her all these things, and she was now saying there was even archaeological material available, simultaneously. While speaking about this book, Seth had also given her some archaeological material. Even so, Jane still doubted whether he had the ability to obtain highly technical material for the young scientist who had called earlier. This was something they had talked about a while ago -- in August there had been one, from California, probably from Silicon Valley or somewhere in California, I forget, he did not say specifically, a young scientist who went over to discuss some issues between the Seth material and current science, purely theoretical, purely scientific questions. At the time Jane was not particularly good at this area, so she did not know whether she could obtain that material for him; this required her to communicate with Seth in order to get it. So Jane did not know whether she could now obtain material at this level of science, this purely theoretical material. While she was working on this book, she felt this question was quite far away from her.

Below is about Willy, because earlier he had talked about his cat. Their cat Willy ran around outside every day and did not come home; they were now talking about this matter of Willy. Let us go through it quickly, and through this you can see many interesting things. Seth said: In a strange way, Willy is the cat that, in a strange way, is somewhat frightened by its own behavior, frightened by itself. Why? Because Ruburt -- here Ruburt refers to Jane -- Jane did not want to stay home too much because of work. Jane actually did not want to stay home; she wanted to go out, but because there was too much work -- you see, she wrote poetry and wrote books, and helped Seth do these things, and also ran three classes at the same time: the ESP class, a writing class, and at the same time transmitting with Seth -- all three were going on simultaneously. She wanted to go out whenever she wanted; she herself decided she needed to go out often, and now she first sent Willy out as an experimental tool. You see, she herself could not get out, so she sent her cat out. But Willy himself did not understand what was going on; the cat did not understand what was going on. It went out running every day, out all day long, day after day. Actually it was Jane who wanted to go out, but Jane could not get out, so Jane's deeper consciousness sent Willy out. Seth said Willy loved to go outside, but it was not accustomed to being out all day long; to some degree, it felt it had been exiled. Actually it had simply picked up Ruburt's intense feeling -- he used this phrase "picked up." The cat, Willy, picked up Ruburt's intense feeling. What feeling? The desire to go out. Ruburt's heart especially wanted to go out; although she had no choice, staying home writing every day, she still wanted to go out in her heart. And her increasingly intense, eager wish -- Ruburt's increasingly intense wish was picked up by the cat. Ruburt's wish to go out was picked up by the cat. In some respects, these were not directed at Willy; they were not sent out toward the cat, but Ruburt also knew the cat would perceive them. Do you understand? Willy had always been a house cat, staying at home, just as Jane also stayed home writing all day. Willy was supposed to be a house cat, and it was the same as Jane, because the habits changed -- it was this house cat whose habits changed, not the other cat, the one named Lonnie. Because Willy the house cat changed, going out every day; the house cat had now become a wild cat. To some degree, both of you tacitly consented to this happening. Both of you -- meaning Jane and Rob -- you both tacitly consented. The door was always open; obviously if you just closed the door, it could not get out, and that would be that, but you never closed the door, so you tacitly consented. You tacitly consented to this process of the house cat becoming a wild cat, and then you still said why does it not come home every day. Do you understand what I mean by this? Rob said I understand. The reason he understood was that their house had flooded a couple of days earlier; after the flood everything had been soaked, and after being soaked the door swelled up, so the door was hard to close. Since the door was hard to close, he just left it open and did not bother with it. So this led to the cat going out every day.

Seth said: Now wait for us a moment, Ruburt is beginning to feel itchy. Ruburt, right now, immediately felt itchy, wanting to go out. But the one who was really itchy was the cat. So there was some inner connection between Ruburt and the cat; actually at this moment it was not that Ruburt wanted to go out, it was that the cat wanted to go out again, so it became that Ruburt also wanted to go out. He felt he wanted to go out, so now you cannot tell whether Ruburt influenced the cat, or the cat influenced Ruburt, or whether the two of them were influencing each other. Rob said no wonder. Seth said your Willy is safe; just show it your love and that will be enough. The cat is safe; do not worry about this cat, because every day when the cat went out, they would go look for it; the cat did not come home day after day, and he kept going to look for it; Rob often went to look for the cat. At the same time, help it develop regular times for going out and coming in. It is not that Ruburt needs to make his own actions regular; it is just that his distraction or impatience made the cat overreact. The cat overreacted; normally it would not. On the other hand, Ruburt's feeling of multiple frequencies indeed represents a kind of progress -- the meaning of multiple frequencies is multiple channels, being able to receive things from many frequencies at the same time, things from many channels. He said this represents a kind of progress. Actually this development had long been possible; it is only now entering into his experience. But do not forget to remind him of his success in this and other areas; remind him, because the feeling and the fact of success will continue. Because you must remind him of this success, so this feeling and this fact, the fact of success, will continue. Tell Jane this. This session ends here; next time we will talk about your paintings.

This section of content ends here. Actually by then they had already reached 12:07, already past midnight. Then he said she had been trying to describe an apparition. Jane came back from the trance state, and she kept trying to describe an apparition. It was invisible, but it was hovering back and forth right in front of them, like a large oval-shaped thing. It was composed of a group of energies, and it could represent a "person" like Seth; it should be able to represent something like a person, that kind of pure-energy person, but it had no name. It had no name, and they did not know what it was called; it was just there. Jane did not feel that it had any intention of helping, nor did she know what it wanted to do. This phenomenon could not be precisely described, nor her own feelings about it, and I also find it very hard to translate what she said into words. I am recording it here just in case something happens with her someday. Because she had often been like this before; she would have some special feeling, and a couple of days later Seth would explain in a session why she had had that feeling.

Up to now, the ESP class members had been closely following the progress of this book, putting the material from each chapter into practical use at any time. With this book, The Nature of Personal Reality, from the very beginning, the ESP class members, those dozen or so students, had been watching it every day. So after each chapter was written, they would take it out to share and apply it, because it contained too many things related to the individual, things related to every person, so they could not wait; they could not wait until the end of a chapter -- every single session, they would take it out to share. Jane and Rob were the same. Unlike when writing Seth Speaks, when Jane would not even look at it while writing -- now it was not like that. He said every time a session was written, they would analyze it and apply it, put it into practical use. Do you see? They put it into practical use; they did not just read it and leave it at that. So they were following this book as it progressed. Although the book had not yet been published, because they had an advantage -- because they were students in Jane's class -- every time Seth finished speaking and Rob finished organizing it, they would take it out to share. It seems that all of us will grow together with this book; it seems they will all grow.

A few days later, some guests came over and talked about these phenomena. They discovered that Seth had accumulated some undelivered material, about the need for fellowship groups and conformity. That is, on Friday, some guests came to the house, and while Jane was chatting with the guests, she talked about this material. This material was not something Seth had actually given her in a session. Seth did not really give us this material in the Wednesday session; he did not give it, and he still has not, he never gave it, but Jane on her own spoke about these issues. Seth did not speak through Jane, but Jane herself spoke about these issues; perhaps Jane had obtained it through other channels. So by Saturday morning, the next morning, Rob asked Jane to recall what she had said the previous evening, to see whether it could be added in.

Then Jane wrote: I was telling Rob and our friends about the channels I had perceived in the last session -- that is, many channels coming in at the same time. Suddenly I began to draw out one of them. When she was talking about these channels, suddenly she pulled out one from among those channels, some material about conformity and the need for individual expression. Then, this is Jane speaking, Jane said I discovered that Seth had already gathered a large pile of material, right there, just there, the material was right there, including the completely different biological foundations of conformity and independence. These are two biological viewpoints: whether to change with the environment, or to maintain one's own uniqueness and independence. That is, the question of changing with the environment versus maintaining one's own independence. She said take the amoeba, for example -- this is a biological question, a single-celled microorganism. She gave an example, saying I understood that the protoplasm within the amoeba, the basis of material life, represents the individual's outward-developing quality, but the protoplasm must adapt to its environment. In this example, the environment becomes the amoeba's body; the environment becomes its body. When the amoeba acts under the guidance of its individual needs in responding to stimuli, its body can only move as a whole unit. When the protoplasm responds to stimuli on its own, it must also take into account the cellular form it possesses, so the cellular form maintains the integrity of the whole unit. Therefore, when the protoplasm wants to move, it must carry the whole unit along with it. What he was saying means this: the protoplasm is a part within this body, the core part of its life, but outside the cell there are still other components; it is a single-celled organism, and outside the cell there are other components. But when you stimulate the protoplasm, when the protoplasm wants to move, or wants to change shape, the whole cell must change along with it. Actually it is the protoplasm that wants to change, but because it is a whole, it is a complete thing, so the whole unit is complete, and it must change all together. What he was saying here -- actually you do not need to over-interpret it; he was just talking about some biological things, some biological questions.

Then, in the Wednesday session, they again talked about the question of fellowship groups. This was a question Rob had raised earlier. He said this was just an example of a topic brought out by certain words. From the biological viewpoint, and in terms of culture and history in all their aspects, the Seth material still has much that could be said but has not been said. On this question of the Freemasons, on this question of the amoeba, on this question of whether one should conform -- that is, what is called "when in Rome, do as the Romans do," changing with the environment -- when we go to a place, for example when we travel to another unfamiliar country, when you travel to a Muslim country, do you do as the Romans do, or do you stand apart? That is what he meant. What he was referring to here was a biological question, not a sociological question of ours. In biology, does your cell change in response to changes in its surrounding environment, or does it maintain its own uniqueness and stand apart? That is what he meant. Seth, on biology, culture, and history, in all aspects taken together, regarding the question just mentioned, had things that could be said, and things that had not been said; there was much that could be said, but none of it had been said. The same question could also be discussed in terms of the growth of the human body and the development of cancer cells. It could also be discussed in terms of the growth of the human body and cancer cells. She did not expand on this. It is like saying cancer cells escape from a conforming pattern and impose a new pattern on the structure of the unit. This was Jane's own -- she had obtained part of the material from Seth, and what she finally recalled on her own was this one piece of content; in the end, she did not continue to expand on it. She said, thinking again about this last sentence, she said this idea was also new to me. So Seth's material is actually extremely abundant. While he was transmitting to Jane, Seth had prepared a great deal of material, placed in different channels -- that is, whatever you want to know, I will transmit it to you. Previously Jane could only receive one of these materials -- the one Seth told her. But now she actually knew that all these materials existed simultaneously, a great deal of material. She could have them all at the same time if she wanted, but she only had one mouth, one voice, and Rob only had one hand to write with, so she had no way to do it simultaneously; she could only speak them one by one. Here there was just an insertion, a small segment from one of her channels, to let you know the content of these channels, to let you realize that the Seth material is actually extremely vast. Every single point could be expanded upon. For example, on this question of whether to conform or stand apart, whether from biology, culture, sociology, the humanities, or the individual body including cancer cells, there were things he could have expanded upon, but for various reasons -- time, concepts -- he did not expand on them. So this is actually a small regret. Everyone should know that the Seth material is actually extremely rich; what we see or know today is only the part he most wanted to transmit, and there is still a great deal he wanted to say. This part of the content ends here, and below is the next session.

The deeper parts of the psyche have no concept of time

Seth continues dictating:

Therefore you will react to the data you receive according to your conscious beliefs about the nature of reality.

Here I must emphasize, including what this chapter and the previous ones have been stressing all along, the importance of conscious beliefs. In other words, although we know that we have various unconscious levels, and that many levels of consciousness occur in the unconscious stage, as if this unconscious stage is also very important, he stresses here that your conscious part, your conscious beliefs, are also very important.

Session 617

The deeper portions of your own self do not need to take the ego's ideas of time into consideration.

That is, the deeper part of your own self, that is, the whole of you, the deepest part, does not need to take the idea of time into consideration; it has no concept of time. In other words, the deeper part of your self has all of its attention on the present moment.

But we often have an ego-based sense of time, and so this part of the self also deals with material that usually escapes the ego's perception. This material may not be recognized by the ego until it reaches a certain point in ego time. It processes this material inwardly, but after that material has been processed, or after it has been digested and absorbed, you may not feel it in your present moment; only when you reach a particular point in time can your ego recognize this material.

The ego is quite serious about time, about clock time.

Because it must deal directly with the everyday world. If you are not serious about time, then you are in trouble -- you miss your plane, you miss your train, you make appointments to meet people and discuss things, and in real life, if you do not pay attention to time or take it seriously, it is almost impossible to get anywhere. So it is normal for the ego to take time seriously; that is its job.

But even the ego, to some degree, understands that the clock is only a convention, only it is unwilling to have that convention broken. That is, your ego ultimately understands that so-called time is simply something people have agreed upon by convention. For example, suppose we agree to meet at four o'clock in the afternoon at a certain cafe to discuss something; that process is actually a matter of convention. In order to meet at that time, in order to run into each other, we must agree on a common point in time. Time itself is a convention.

The ego often ignores any clairvoyant or precognitive material that comes from the deeper psyche to the conscious mind.

It often ignores clairvoyant or precognitive material. Occasionally, when the ego recognizes that such material may be extremely useful, then it becomes more open and acknowledges it. When it considers this material extremely useful, only then will it open up and acknowledge it. That being said, the premise is that this material must conform to what it considers possible or impossible. In other words, this material must also conform to its belief system. You must understand that even if your clairvoyance or precognitive telepathy transmits to you material that your outer consciousness cannot perceive, this material still must conform to your belief and value system; otherwise it will not accept it.

The ego's ideas are actually your ideas, because it is a part of you.

If you dwell on danger or potential disaster, if every day you are preoccupied, worrying like the man of Qi who feared the sky would fall, fretting about bad things that may happen in the future; if your thinking about the world is focused mainly on physical survival, your mind fixed on all the situations that may threaten your existence -- if you are always thinking about these things -- then you may find yourself suddenly becoming aware of precognitive dreams. If you are especially concerned about your survival and future safety, you will find clues in some precognitive dreams, and the predictions in those dreams will be nothing but natural disasters or man-made calamities, or else things like murder or robbery. That is, if you are overly concerned about life in the physical world, overly concerned about your own safety, then these things will show up in your dreams.

Then, the idea that life is so fragile, that every step is fraught with danger, is so strong in your mind that it allows the ego to let this material, which is originally outside of time, become manifest, because your fearful belief convinces the ego that it must remain on constant alert.

These future events are actually outside the framework of your present time, because they have not happened yet, and they may exist only as an extremely slight possibility. But your ego, because of such a belief and value system of yours -- what belief? The belief that life is so fragile, that every step is fraught with danger, that everywhere is full of risk -- when you have such an idea, you allow such things to manifest in your life. In ancient times, the idiom "the man of Qi who feared the sky would fall" described this very clearly. What was the man of Qi who feared the sky would fall? The disaster he foresaw actually had nothing to do with him.

Yet, out of all the many kinds of unconscious telepathic and clairvoyant material available to you, you will happen to know this particular batch.

Out of the unconscious telepathic and clairvoyant material, you happen to see only these things. What is their use? The use of those precognitive dreams you have is only to reinforce your idea that danger lurks on every side; you are reinforcing this idea. If this material appears in your dreams, you may say, "I am afraid to dream, because my nightmares often come true." It is not that the dreams come true; it is that your beliefs cause these things, attract these things, and make them come true.

So then you try to suppress your dreams, and you also suppress your memory of your dreams. Actually, what you really should do is not suppress your dreams, nor fear that your dreams will become reality, that your nightmares will come true. You should examine your conscious beliefs -- conscious beliefs are also very important -- examine your conscious beliefs.

Because they are so strong and powerful, they not only keep you preoccupied with the disasters of the human world, but also turn your inner abilities in that direction.

Here I will say a few words off topic. This is something that often happens in life: some parents, or people in close intimate relationships, care very much about the people they are close to, such as their children, their kids, or their lovers, boyfriends, girlfriends, husbands, wives, and so on. But they worry too much, and after worrying too much, they are always imagining: when you go out today you must pay attention to safety, do not let anything bad happen, do not do this or that, look, the moment I think about your future, look at you now, and so on. When they say these things, under the banner of concern, under the banner of love and care, they are actually instilling in you a whole series of negative emotions, negative beliefs, and negative values.

So at such times you should try to avoid these people. If you cannot control them, and you cannot change them, then keep your distance from them, no matter how close your relationship is -- she is your mother, he is your father, he is your most intimate person. If they do not change their beliefs, and they always want to instill these negative beliefs in you, to make you accept their views, that is, to be careful everywhere, to pay attention to safety everywhere, to worry everywhere about what the future will be like, full of all kinds of worry and fear about the future. For example, suppose their daughter has never married, and she may only be twenty-eight or twenty-nine, but the parents have already begun to imagine all the terrible scenarios of their daughter growing old alone. And so on. When the daughter finally finds a partner, they begin to worry whether this young man truly loves their daughter, whether he is after the family property, whether he is not sincere with her, and so on and so forth.

If you have this kind of thinking, then you will always be full of fear about the future, and everything will seem to you like a future fraught with danger. So in this situation, the concern of parents, or the reminders of some well-meaning people, can sometimes be more like a curse than like concern. Excessive concern is a curse, not concern; you must be clear about this in your heart. So when there are people around you with this kind of negative emotion, who, under the banner of caring for you and loving you, keep instilling this curse-like concern into you, stop them in time. Do not feel embarrassed, and do not feel that you would lose face. If you are strong enough, it does not matter; if you are not strong enough and are easily influenced by them, then tell them: do not say these things, I do not want to hear them, and I am not willing to accept them. If you can let it go in one ear and out the other, it does not matter, and if you are not willing to tear off the polite facade, that is fine too. But if you cannot do that, and you are often influenced by them, then either make your viewpoint clear and state your attitude, or stop having more contact with them. When you do anything else, do not consult them, and do not expect to get positive, encouraging words from them. What they give you will always be negative, worried, imagining all the most terrible things about the future for you in advance, laying them out before you to frighten you. This is a digression, but what he is saying here means the same thing.

The Two-Way Flow of Telepathy

Telepathic communication goes on constantly, and it is usually carried on at an unconscious level simply because your conscious mind is in a state of becoming.

Actually, it should be "becoming" as a state -- he uses the word "state" here, meaning a state of becoming something. Your conscious mind is always changing; it is always in a state of becoming, and it cannot hold on to all the data available to you.

For example, if your conscious thoughts tend to be more positive, you will respond to telepathic data of the same nature, even if only at the unconscious level. Doing so at the unconscious level is still effective.

As I mentioned earlier, you are also constantly sending out your own telepathic thoughts.

In Session 616, you are also constantly sending out your own telepathic thoughts. You are both a receiver and a sender. You receive telepathy from others, and you also send telepathy out to those around you, and others respond according to their own ideas about reality.

By focusing attention on vitalizing and creative thoughts, a family can continually reinforce its joy, pleasure, and spontaneity; or by reinforcing thoughts of resentment, anger, doubt, and failure, it can let half of its energy drain away.

It lets half of your own energy drain away for nothing. So here he emphasizes telepathy: even at your unconscious level, if you hold to some positive viewpoints, it is still helpful to you. If at the unconscious level you keep maintaining a negative belief or viewpoint, then this telepathy will only attract negative telepathy.

Jane cleverly and somewhat humorously emphasized this in the previous paragraph, particularly directed at me personally.

This passage is actually also about Rob and Jane, because during their discussion today, Rob said some rather unimpressive things. Seth is actually addressing the two of them here, but this statement is also directed at us.

Both of these attitudes, consciously or unconsciously, reinforce ideas about reality, not only for that family, but also for the people that family comes into contact with.

Two attitudes -- one positive and one negative, one active and one passive -- both kinds of thoughts will reinforce ideas about reality. It affects not only the family members, but also the other people those family members come into contact with.

You get what you concentrate upon, and there is no other main rule.

This is a repetition of something he said before: whatever you concentrate upon, you get. There is no other important rule besides this one -- just this one.

You can easily see the beliefs of others, but perhaps you can clearly see, in your own friends or acquaintances, the invisible beliefs that limit their experience, yet you are blind to your own invisible beliefs, taking them for granted as facts or as characteristics of reality.

We often say -- there is a Chinese saying, "The bystander sees clearly," and that is exactly what this means. We see other people's problems very clearly and very plainly. The limiting thoughts on them, the wrong ideas, the wrong beliefs -- all very clear and obvious. But when it comes to ourselves, we cannot see any of it, not one bit.

So a typical example is among close female friends: when one friend is advising another, she is absolutely articulate and eloquent, able to analyze the love relationship or emotional situation with perfect clarity, telling her that such a scumbag is not worth it, and so on. But when it comes to herself, none of it works at all; she does exactly the same thing. When the words she used to scold her friend are applied to herself -- "once you fall in love, your IQ drops to zero" and so on -- she is perfectly articulate when talking about others, but when it comes to herself, same thing. This is a typical example: seeing other people's problems with perfect clarity, but seeing nothing in oneself. "Those are all facts. What I see are all facts. I do not have any limiting thoughts, and I do not have any limiting mind" -- that is many people's viewpoint.

Therefore your sense data will unquestionably reinforce your ideas.

Because you cannot see your own problems, and you take your beliefs as facts to be perceived, then all the sense data you obtain -- the information the outer world gives you -- will reinforce your ideas and confirm your ideas.

At the same time, you will also react at an unconscious level to clairvoyant and telepathic inner data. Actually, that data is gathered under the organization of your quite conscious ideas.

You react to that data, and that data is actually "gathered" by yourself -- this "gathered" is in quotation marks -- it is collected by yourself.

And these ideas involve your ideas about survival, particularly your ideas about your personal survival, so you are firmly locked into a physical situation.

What kind of physical situation? It is the situation where you believe that everything you come into contact with is fact, and the data obtained through your senses confirms the reality of this situation everywhere. Of course, this sense data is very convincing, because it is so wonderful, so creative, and so actively reflects your own thoughts and beliefs -- whether those beliefs are positive or not. You will fall into this predicament. What kind of predicament? All the information around you is reinforcing this idea; all kinds of beliefs reinforce you, vividly, providing you with all sorts of evidence, one piece of evidence after another, proving that your ideas and your beliefs are right, absolutely correct, that this is fact. So you will believe your beliefs even more firmly.

Here he says that from a larger perspective, there is actually no positive or negative; it does not mean much. Because physical life, each of our life experiences, is meant for you to learn from. We are all here to experience. There is nothing positive or negative; the negative is also something we need to experience, and the positive is also something we need to experience -- this is from a higher dimension. But if you are unhappy, you must remember: if you are unhappy, then the word "negative" is meaningful. What is negative? Anything that makes you unhappy is negative; any belief that makes you unhappy is negative.

He puts "negative" in quotation marks. Actually, positive and negative do not have such a clear-cut real meaning; it is a relative concept. Because when you speak of positive, you must speak of positive relative to what; when you speak of negative, it is negative relative to what. Relative to you, relative to which matter, relative to which idea, it is positive or negative. It is itself a relative concept, a dualistic idea. But he says that because it involves the matter of whether you are happy or not, the word "negative" becomes meaningful. You must remember this.

Start Making a Personal List of Beliefs

He says:

I hope that at least while I am discussing this, readers will also begin to examine their own beliefs.

You may remember that in the latter part of Chapter One, he laid out some core beliefs for everyone. So starting from this section, that is, from the second part of the commentary in Section Two of Chapter Three, we take out paper and pen, and among those earlier core beliefs, we begin to summarize and sort out our own core beliefs, and start organizing our beliefs. Here you only need to sort out the core beliefs; do not bother organizing the non-core ones, because there are too many of them. Your thoughts and beliefs are too numerous.

He says that at this point he hopes we will begin to organize and examine them:

And then perhaps be able to see some invisible beliefs that you have always accepted as absolute truth.

So at this point I hope that after you finish listening to this, or while you are listening, you will take out a piece of paper and a pen and write beside you. Write what? Write the things that follow, that is, which ones are your core beliefs.

He says:

If you are honest enough with yourself, the premise is that you must be honest with yourself.

Do not let anyone else see this. The things you write, you must keep them safe yourself, and do not let others see them. So when you are writing, do not have any worries, such as what if one day someone sees this. First dispel that worry. You can even burn what you have written later or throw it away, that is fine, but you must write it down. The power of language and the power of written words are greater than you imagine. Do not think that the language you write and the statements you make are useless. When we do meditation and when we do exercises, we also know that the power of language is very important. This kind of statement and the power of this kind of language are very important. As for exactly how important, we will not give examples now; we will talk about it later. For now, just remember this: the words you speak and the things you write down, the power of this kind of statement and language itself is strong enough.

Then he says you must be honest with yourself. This is the most basic requirement. We have talked about this in many places, so I will not emphasize it again here. In the process of listing your core beliefs, the first thing is—actually it is not really the first item—it is honesty. Face yourself truthfully, and do not be afraid. At this time, there may really be some bloody concepts, some bloody or filthy and vile thoughts that pop up. That is fine. First write them down. First see them. When you see them, the problem is already half solved. When you choose to avoid them and turn a blind eye to them, then the problem will never be solved.

Therefore, no matter whether this core concept is good or bad, no matter how you approve of it in your heart, do not judge it. First write it down. Later on—in this book by Seth, in fact one of its main points is—it leads you to change your core concepts. This book has many, many methods. It breaks things open and explains them in detail for you, constantly talking about how your psyche is structured, how your ego operates, how these belief systems influence you, and how they influence your real life. Through all of these things, the most fundamental point it tells you is this: you can change your core beliefs. When you change your core beliefs, your outer world changes accordingly. It is that simple. Do not think about changing things outside. You must first change what is inside you.

Core Beliefs Are Your Three Views

All right, now let us look at how to find the so-called core beliefs. He says:

You will eventually find the core beliefs I have emphasized.

These core beliefs, the core beliefs, are your core beliefs. So just think about it, face yourself honestly, and list them out. They are the biggest ideas you hold about your own existence at the time, that is, your core values. To put it plainly, they are your core values. What are your core values? When we look for a partner, we often say: our three views do not match. What are the three views? The view of life, the view of the world, and the view of values, these three important things. Actually, these are your three views. What are your core beliefs? They are your three views. Do you dare to face your three views honestly, do you dare to list them out, list out all of your three views. This work is exactly for that, to list out those so-called invisible three views that are actually influencing your life every moment.

Many other subsidiary beliefs attach themselves to the core beliefs, and what previously seemed unrelated to one another should now also become clearly apparent as branches of the core beliefs.

That is, these subsidiary beliefs, if you pick them out one by one, it seems there is no connection between them, but as long as you list them out, you will find that some subsidiary beliefs seem to have no connection, but actually they are branches of a certain core belief.

Only in their relationship to the core beliefs do they make sense.

"They" refers to the subsidiary beliefs.

Once you understand that the core belief was originally wrong, the others will also disappear.

What he means is, do not work on those subsidiary beliefs. Working on subsidiary beliefs is too complicated, and the workload is too great, and it is not easy for you to handle. He says you only need to correct your core beliefs, and the branches and subsidiary beliefs attached to these core beliefs will automatically disappear. When the great tree falls, the branches and leaves on it naturally cease to exist.

Only core beliefs have enough strength to focus your perception on a certain point, so that in the physical world, that is, in the material world, you perceive only those events related to them.

Because your core beliefs are powerful enough, they will cause you in the three-dimensional world to perceive only the beliefs related to, or in agreement with, these core beliefs.

At the same time, only the power of core beliefs can draw out from your vast inner storehouse of knowledge those worlds that suit them, those worlds that suit their organization.

What does this mean? The inner storehouse of knowledge is your telepathy, the information your inner self gives you. Only your core beliefs can draw from the inner self's knowledge those things that are targeted at them and beneficial to them.

Human Nature Is Evil: A General Core Belief

Now let me give an example of a core belief, he says, so we can understand it better:

The belief that human nature is evil is a general belief.

Human nature is evil -- this is something we often discuss: the question of whether human nature is inherently good or inherently evil at birth. If you hold this kind of general idea that human nature is evil, it is a core belief. This is your value system, your outlook on life, your worldview.

Around them, events will spring up that only reinforce it. In what people with such a belief see and hear, whether personal or general experience, it will further deepen this belief.

Around it will spring up those events that reinforce it. Whether collective, individual, or social, everything he sees serves to strengthen it.

From all available physical data, whether from newspapers, television, letters, or private sources, as long as they concentrate their attention, they can find data that confirms those beliefs.

They can see those things. All he sees is this -- he opens all the news, and there is an overwhelming flood of information, including movies, everything, including chatting with friends, all confirming his own belief: human nature is evil. All he sees are bad things -- one evil person did such a bad thing, another great villain did such a bad thing, the whole world is full of scoundrels.

Suspicion of others will grow greater and greater, let alone any confidence in his own person.

He has no confidence in himself either. This belief will penetrate into the most intimate areas of his life, until finally, any evidence that could refute this belief seems impossible to find. In the end, there is no evidence that can refute this belief; all evidence supports this belief. Then your belief cannot be changed -- it is very hard to change.

This is an invisible core belief. The worst example. A person holding this belief will no longer trust his spouse, family, friends, colleagues, country, or, generally speaking, he will no longer trust the whole world. Because he feels that human nature is evil, so whom would he trust? He feels that everyone wants to harm him.

My Life Has No Value: A Personal Core Belief

Let me give another example, this time a more personal concept. The previous one was a concept about values and worldview. Now he says, let us take a personal core concept, one that many people hold: my life has no value, the things I do are meaningless. This sense of self-worthlessness is also a belief that many people carry. In this vast universe, this vast sea of humanity, this teeming multitude of beings, I am just a small person, an insignificant little person. What meaning is there in anything I do? Especially when such a person has studied some half-understood spiritual knowledge, read a bit of Buddhist material or some other so-called spiritual chicken soup, not only do they fail to develop a desire to challenge, to strive, to realize their own potential, they instead develop thoughts of despair and world-weariness, ideas of withdrawing from the world. We often say that young people in society today have become "Buddha-like youths," living in a more Buddha-like way. The so-called Buddha-like attitude, to put it nicely, is having seen through everything; to put it bluntly, it is a passive, world-avoiding viewpoint, a passive, resigned acceptance of fate.

So this is the belief that my life has no value, no meaning. He says the person who holds this idea usually does not recognize it as an invisible belief. They do not think it is an invisible belief. Instead, they emotionally believe that their own life is meaningless. They believe it on an emotional level. They do not think it is a belief; they think it is a feeling, an emotion. They believe that individual action is utterly useless, that small people are utterly useless, and that death is the final end -- since we all have to die sooner or later -- and since the outcome is the same for everyone, what meaning is there?

There is a whole host of subsidiary concepts connected with this, all of which deeply affect his family.

You will see that such a person lives every day in a very dejected state. They not only affect themselves, they affect their family, and they drag down everyone who comes into contact with them. These people are the kind with very strong negative energy, very strong negative emotions. They not only feel that they themselves are meaningless, they feel that you are meaningless too. They feel that all other human beings in the world are meaningless. They even feel that the world itself is meaningless. So they have this sense of meaninglessness. They cannot find their own meaning, and they cannot find anyone else's meaning either.

Therefore, when you are making your list of personal beliefs, from this session onward, each of us should prepare a piece of paper or a notebook and list our own personal beliefs. Look at what your own beliefs are, and list them one by one. It is fine if you cannot finish the list; whenever you think of something, add it. When you are unhappy, remember -- when you are unhappy, examine why you are unhappy. Find the root of your unhappiness, and then see whether it is caused by some belief. Dig down to the very bottom and unearth that belief.

Of course, if you are living a very happy, joyful, contented, and blissful life, there is no need for you to do this work. Then you do not need to do anything at all; just live happily and blissfully every day. But if you find yourself in a state of unhappiness in life, if you are dissatisfied with many situations, dissatisfied in every respect, then pick out the ideas and thoughts that are causing your unhappiness. What is making you unhappy? Are you worried about something, afraid of something, or failing to get something? Write down the reasons for your unhappiness, and then from those reasons, trace directly downward, trace backward to find the root, find the root of the unhappiness, until you finally find the core belief that is causing your unhappiness, and write it down.

He says that in this way you should make a list of personal beliefs. So we can treat this work as the third exercise of this book: making a list of personal beliefs. Of course, this exercise will be relatively long. It is not something that will be wrapped up right away. This exercise may continue all the way to the end of this book. Start preparing now. Do not wait until the very end to write it. Start preparing this list now, and keep it going until the end of the book.

Treat It as Someone Else's List to Examine

He says:

Don't let any belief slip by.

Don't let any belief slip by.

Interpret it as if it were someone else's list.

After you have listed these beliefs, don't treat them as your own. If you treat them as your own, you will be in a lot of pain. When you examine them, you will feel that you can't bring yourself to do it. Performing surgery on yourself is still quite difficult. So what do you do then? After you finish making this list, treat it as someone else's list. It's like you are a psychologist, and when you analyze someone else, how do you help them interpret their beliefs? Because you see others clearly, but it's easy not to see yourself clearly. So the best approach is to treat it as someone else's list.

If you have a friend you can trust, or if you have a very good friend or a very close family member, you can examine each other's belief lists. After writing yours, give yours to the other person, and the other person gives theirs to you -- if you have someone that trustworthy. If you don't, then just examine it yourself as if it were someone else's list. If you do, the simplest thing is to give your list to the other person and take theirs, you analyze theirs, and they analyze yours. But agree in advance that during this process no one is allowed to get upset. You can't have a situation where you're analyzing and then suddenly the two of you start fighting. No getting upset -- you must remember this.

It's just like analyzing the clothes each person is wearing. When you analyze this belief list, it's like analyzing how someone is dressed. For example, this belief is like his scarf. If you think this scarf isn't good, then you can change it, just swap it for another one, or simply take it off. There's no need for the two of you to get into a quarrel over this, saying things like, "What's wrong with you? Look at how dark and negative your beliefs are," and so on. Don't evaluate it that way. You just make the list and find its roots. This list can be changed. It's not your flesh, nor your arm or your fingers. It's not something that can't be removed or replaced. It can be changed at any time. The purpose of recognizing it clearly is simply to pick out the bad ones and replace them.

So start doing this exercise today. Do it little by little. Don't end up at the very end with this exercise having no meaning. As we study and listen, let's each make our own belief list.

Positive Beliefs Are Equally Important

He said: However, I do not intend for you to write down only the negative ones in particular.

It is not that you should only write down the negative ones in particular; you should write down the positive ones too. You must accept the joyful ones. Your list of beliefs is not only for writing down bad things; you should also write down the good things, and you should also write down your positive beliefs.

Because those successes in those experiences, those successes you have experienced in your life, those factors that you are pleased with, all of these must be taken into account, and that is extremely important.

Even those small successes in your life, those moments of satisfaction that you think are not very important, you should list them all out. Why? Because we are asking you to seize those feelings of accomplishment, to experience and seize that feeling of accomplishment, to live within that feeling of accomplishment.

And then translate them, translate or transfer them to the places where you have encountered difficulties.

That is, translate and transfer this feeling of accomplishment to the places where you have encountered difficulties. But you must remember:

First there is the existence of the idea, that is, you first have the existence of the idea, and only then does the concrete experience follow.

So when you have the existence of this idea of a strong feeling of accomplishment, what follows is that the experience of that feeling of accomplishment will follow. At this time you must learn to do the transferring and the shifting, to take your feeling of accomplishment from the successes in certain things, that feeling of joy and satisfaction from the successes in certain things, and shift it over to the places where you are currently encountering difficulties.

For example, let me give an example: you are very skilled in interpersonal relationships, you can be smooth and tactful in all directions, kind to others, and handle all kinds of relationships well, but perhaps you do not handle problems well in your specific work performance, in dealing with problems at work. Then at this time you must take that feeling of accomplishment you have in interpersonal relationships and transplant it onto the problems you encounter at work. Carry that kind of confidence and satisfaction you have in interpersonal relationships, carry that state with you as you deal with the matters at work. That is, seize that feeling, seize that state, and shift it over to the areas where you are not skilled, or to the places where you encounter difficulties. Use that feeling from what you are good at to deal with the things you are not good at. This feeling of yours from being skilled, from accomplishment, or from satisfaction will produce very direct and subtle changes in the things you previously thought were difficult, and it will bring about those good achievements and experiences.

He said:

You create your own reality.

No matter how many times this sentence is said, it is never too many; indeed he has said it many times.

There will be a period when all of your beliefs will balance each other out, and they will be consistent with one another.

Your beliefs will no longer be in conflict; all of your beliefs will be consistent, without dissonance, and self-consistent; that is, when that time comes they will be consistent with one another.

Your beliefs may be quite limited, perhaps erroneous, perhaps built upon false premises, yet their vitality and power are nevertheless very real.

Regardless of whether this belief is correct or erroneous, its vitality—the vitality and power of this belief—and it seems to bring about excellent results in every case. This "excellent results" does not mean good results; it means results that conform to this belief. What he means by "excellent" here is results that completely conform to this belief of yours; that is what he means.

Wealth Is Everything: A Biased but Powerful Belief

He said, for example, let us give an example:

The idea that wealth is everything is certainly extremely incorrect, but if a person accepts it wholeheartedly, he really will be both rich and healthy, and all things will seem to fit his belief quite well. Yet this is still a belief held about reality, just a belief, and therefore in his experience there must be invisible gaps that he does not know exist.

He said this in two respects. On the one hand, suppose some people think wealth is everything, that wealth is the root solution to all problems. If there is a person who is firm, wholehearted -- remember, it must be wholehearted persistence in this viewpoint -- then what he projects into real life is that he really is both rich and healthy, and all things also seem to fit his belief. Fit what? That is, it can solve all problems. Within the scope of his cognition, it can solve all problems, so he will be like a fish in water, getting whatever wind and rain he wants. In real life you often see many such people. He will neither do spiritual learning, nor will he make such spiritual pursuits. He only clings to one fixed idea: money makes the world go round, money can solve all problems. He believes far more than you do. Although he is very stubborn, and this idea is certainly biased, he believes in this biased idea so much, so persistently, what will the result be? This is his belief, and he will project the results produced by his belief. He is very rich, he is very healthy, and he will also get many things he wants. So at this time we will see that in real life there are many, many such people.

On the surface, the situation seems extremely favorable to him, getting whatever wind and rain he wants, and this person seems fully satisfied -- remember, it must be "seems," seems fully satisfied. But beneath the surface, an incomplete understanding of himself constantly gnaws at him. On the surface all is calm, but inwardly he actually knows in his own heart that this wealth-centered idea is a biased, unbalanced idea, and he is also very clear about it. So this incomplete understanding constantly gnaws at him, turns back and bites him. So you see many rich people, they actually have also been pursuing that kind of spiritual balance, because inwardly they are actually quite dissatisfied too; they know.

Therefore when your beliefs change, your experience and behavior will also change. On the one hand you are learning, and on the other hand there will still be some pressure, creative pressure will also exist.

While learning, there will also be pressure. He then gave the example of that rich man, that wealthy person:

Perhaps he suddenly awakens and realizes that his belief will limit him. Because he focused single-mindedly on it, wealth and health both became his only goals. This broken belief also causes him to fall ill, perhaps. And the illness will seem like a negative experience, but through this illness, he may very likely have the opportunity to see some areas that he had always rejected, and thereby gain great benefit.

This often happens in real life. Including among some of my friends, some people have had especially smooth sailing all along, especially rich, wealth simply beyond description, but suddenly one day he may fall ill, and this illness comes suddenly. For example, he may have some accident, such as the doctor telling him that there are some tumors in his brain, or some tumors in his arteries, or someone's heart may suddenly undergo some changes, or some serious illness will suddenly come. These illnesses seem to him to be bad, to be negative experiences, but this illness is like an alarm bell in his life, suddenly striking him on the head at the time when he is having the smoothest sailing. Then at this time, when he discovers that his life will soon end, or that his life may be limited, he will suddenly figure out some truths. He will discover that there are still more important things in this world that he has not done, and more important things he has not done either. So at this time he will have some reflection. For him, this illness that seems negative, even these illnesses that might take his life, from a certain angle are actually very helpful to him; he will gain great benefit.

Then the change in belief may cause him to begin doubting himself.

He then begins to doubt his other beliefs. Because after the event of falling ill, it may cause him to doubt his other beliefs, and only then can he come to realize: as far as wealth is concerned, he had once achieved much because of his belief; but from those other, deeper experiences that emerged because of his illness, in the reality of the illness, he came to appreciate the importance of family affection, the importance of life, and only then did he experience the meaning of life, and only then did he discover that there are other areas of life that he had never set foot in at all. At this time he has deeper experiences. And these experiences, compared to wealth -- the wealth experience in which he had already achieved much -- these are things he had never come into contact with before.

Only then did he discover, you know, that a person who thinks wealth is everything is not very concerned about feelings, about family affection, about loyalty and friendship, about friends. If you have such a person in your life, you will know that everything about him is false; he thinks that in this world money is the only real thing, and everything else is fake. So his relationships with his own family members, with his relatives, are all of that very distorted kind of idea. He thinks his relatives are all coveting his money, and his family members are also coveting his money. He thinks other people are all like him, all money-centered, and other people are the same, also living for money just like him. He thinks this is truth, this is the only truth in the world, because he believes this is truth, so he thinks money is everything, wealth is everything, and he thinks other people are the same.

Until one day after he falls ill, he discovers the care his relatives give him, and only then does he appreciate the preciousness of family affection, the preciousness of life, and so on, and only then does he know that in life, besides wealth, there are also feelings, there is also the spiritual world, there is also inner peace of mind and the pursuit of the spiritual world of the psyche. At this time he will suddenly awaken to many things.

At this point he will learn that life experience encompasses various levels of reality that were previously unknown to him, and those are also readily available to him, without needing to rely on the illness that originally brought them.

Those things like family affection are not only available when one is ill; they are there all the time, right there. Those life experiences, those precious things are right at his hand, right beside him. He just could not see them before, completely ignored them, turned a blind eye to them. But through this illness he discovers that these things were right beside him all along, right where he could easily reach them, and he did not need that illness to obtain them. So there was no need to fall ill; he had not seen them before, and falling ill was precisely to let him see them.

A new set of beliefs then emerges.

At this time new beliefs will emerge, and he is rethinking the value and meaning of life. At the same time there will also be pressure, but it is creative pressure.

Beliefs and Illness

Now he gives another example:

Conscious thoughts govern the state of your health. If you constantly dwell on worries about illness, you will become ill.

If you think every day, "Don't get sick, don't get sick. What will I do if I get sick?" you will become ill.

Since you believe you become ill because of viruses, infections, or accidents, you must go to a doctor who operates within that belief system.

You have to find someone who believes that viruses make you ill, that bacteria can infect you, that accidents can make you ill--things like getting cancer without knowing how it happened--you have to find a doctor within a system that shares this belief system. Because you believe it, you see. Because this is what you believe, you can only find a doctor within the same belief system. Because you believe they can cure your illness. This is your belief. You believe the doctor can cure your illness, and that is why you go to them.

So, with luck, your condition will be relieved, and your illness will seem to lessen. However, because you do not understand that your thoughts caused your illness, you will repeat the same mistakes again and again.

New symptoms will appear, and you will go to the doctor again.

If you are in the process of changing your beliefs, if you begin to realize that your thoughts and feelings brought about the illness, then for a while you may not know what to do.

Why might you not know what to do? Let's read on. You understand perfectly well--you understand that the doctor can, at most, temporarily ease your suffering. That is, when your beliefs change, if you previously had a belief that said, "When I am ill, I can only go to a doctor. Only a doctor can cure my illness," and later you understand that your thoughts are what cause you to become ill, then unless your thoughts change, the illness will come again and again. But during this process, you think, "I want to change my beliefs. I will change my beliefs to resolve my physical problems." All right, during this process, there is a stage: by this point, you no longer believe this doctor can cure your illness, because you know your illness was caused by your thoughts. You know where the root of your illness lies, and you believe this very strongly. But at this point, you do not yet have any actual evidence to convince you. You simply know it, you know it at the level of belief, but when you have not yet seen actual evidence, you will be in a state where you cannot find a foothold in either direction. That is, when the new belief has not yet been established, and you know the old belief is wrong, you will feel very lost.

At this point, you understand that the doctor's help is only temporary, but you may not yet dare to trust fully in your ability to change your thoughts, or you may be frightened by their effectiveness.

One possibility is that you do not believe you can really change your thoughts and also change your illness. At the same time, some people may be frightened by the effect of an illness disappearing instantly after their thoughts change. There are so many examples of this that I will not go into them. You can find so many examples online. When it comes to this, I think the best illustration is an American film called The Guitar³, called Guitar. I forget when that film came out, probably seven or eight years ago. You can search for this film, The Guitar.

What is The Guitar about? It presents an extreme situation. It is about an American woman, in New York, I think, who is hit by three major life events at the same time. The first is that she discovers she has been diagnosed with an illness called throat cancer. The doctor tells her there is a cancer in her throat, that she has throat cancer. The second is that her company fires her, and she loses her job. At the same time, her boyfriend breaks up with her. Because it is a film, you see, it takes three things that might not happen at the same time and makes them all happen at once. Almost all three things happen to her within a single day.

Then her doctor tells her she has at most three months to live--the throat cancer is already at an advanced stage, and she has at most three months to live. By this point, she has lost her job, her boyfriend has broken up with her, and she has no one and nothing to rely on. After feeling depressed for a day or two, this woman makes a very surprising decision: she says she wants to live the life she wants to live. Even though she has only three months, she still wants those three months to be the way she wants them to be, and she will have no reservations. Previously, she had been under a great deal of pressure in New York, renting a very basic apartment, one with very poor conditions. But now she stops doing that. She finds a large place in the best part of New York, somewhere with a view of Central Park, where she can open the windows and see Central Park. She rents a place that is especially large, like a big studio, a large, open-plan apartment all on one level, with huge floor-to-ceiling windows. After renting it, she does not have the energy to arrange furniture or anything like that. She does not do that. She just gets a mattress or something and lives there.

Then one day, while she is out walking around, she sees a shop selling electric guitars. She suddenly remembers how much she loved electric guitars as a child, but her family, her parents, simply would not buy her one or let her have a guitar. They would not let her study music either, thinking that forming bands and such was something young people did when they were not doing anything worthwhile. So she never bought a guitar. But now, since she is going to die soon anyway, she lets go. She buys a guitar, the best guitar, and the best sound system. But she does not know how to play the guitar, so she goes online and opens one of those instructional channels on YouTube, starts watching the lessons, and learns the guitar little by little. She learns bit by bit, at home, watching the videos, using the best guitar, playing by herself in that spacious, large, open-plan apartment. When she gets hungry, she opens the telephone directory--perhaps there was no Dianping or Meituan back then, those things did not exist yet--so all she can do is open the telephone directory and order delivery from those especially expensive, especially good restaurants she had never dared to visit before. Whatever tastes good, she orders it, and she pays by credit card. She takes out lots of credit cards and just keeps charging things to them. After all, she thinks she will be dead in three months, so it does not matter, and she has no intention of paying the money back. Whatever tastes good, she orders it. Whatever she has never eaten and wants to try, she orders it. By this point, she has completely let herself go. In her own home, she may not even wear clothes. Every day she just does whatever she wants, whatever she pleases, fully living as her true self. And she lets herself go completely in other ways too. For example, when she feels sexual desire, when a delivery guy comes, or the delivery person is a woman--she is into both men and women--she no longer cares. Whenever she feels like it, she pulls them into the room and has sex with them, and when they are done, she has them leave right away. That is how she is, completely fearless. She is going to die soon anyway, she is someone who will be dead in three months, so she no longer cares.

That is how she lives: when she is hungry, she orders good food, and when she is not hungry, she learns the guitar, enjoying a dream she has had since childhood. Until one day--she has no idea how much time has passed. Life has no meaning for her, and she has no sense of time in her life. She just keeps living like this. Until one day her cards stop working. She keeps leaving the bills unpaid, leaving them unpaid, and one by one the cards can no longer be used. She cannot order food anymore, and she has nothing left. There is nothing she can do; she cannot keep living like this. At this point, she thinks: What is the date now? She checks the date. This is not right, several months have passed. By rights, I should have died within those three months. How come there is not the slightest sign that I am about to die?

Then she goes to her doctor and says: What is going on with me? Didn't you say that in three months I would... The doctor says, let's examine you again, and takes another scan. Looking at the scan, the doctor says: You don't have it. Those white blood cells are gone, the tumor is gone. Even the doctor looks completely bewildered and cannot understand what happened. She says: Did you misdiagnose me before? The doctor says: There is absolutely no way it was a misdiagnosis. We took many scans when you were ill. Look, these are your records from a few months ago. It could not have been a misdiagnosis. The doctor says: Now it is gone. I do not know how you recovered either. In any case, you are well now. There is nothing wrong with you at all.

At this point, this woman faces another kind of distress. Think about it: several months later, although her illness is gone, she is facing--I remember it was something like two hundred thousand or three hundred thousand dollars in bills waiting for her to pay, an astronomical amount. Because during this time, she ate lavish meals every day, and every day she bought whatever she wanted. Whatever clothes she liked, she bought, all ordered over the phone. Online shopping did not exist back then. If it had, I imagine she would have gone bankrupt even faster. That is the film. You can search for it. It is called The Guitar.

What issue is this film actually talking about? It is saying that when you truly discard all those beliefs that limit you, all those things that limit you, when you truly live as your true self, your illness is gone. He says that at this point, sometimes you may be frightened by what you yourself can do. This really can be frightening. I will not go into too many specific examples. There are so very many examples people share online. When you talk about these examples, they sound like something from a cult, like myths. There are so many. In some of the most miraculous cases, someone goes straight from advanced cancer to a complete recovery within seven days. When you tell people about examples like this, they really sound like something from a cult, beyond what an ordinary person can understand. There are many such things, but not every case turns out this way. It depends on the extent to which you change your beliefs. The example given a couple of days ago is the same. After a few months, that person's advanced cancer was completely gone. He simply chatted with his cancer cells, then changed his beliefs about life, changed his entire value system and belief system--from a truly profit-driven businessman, the head of a publicly listed company, he truly became someone with kind intentions, someone who genuinely acted out of kind intentions.

So the sheer effectiveness of such a change in beliefs in affecting the body can frighten many people. Here he gives an explanation of why it can be frightening: on the one hand, you are half convinced and half doubtful. Some people are half convinced and half doubtful; on the other hand, they may be terrified by the effects they themselves produce, which are completely different from their previous ideas.

Therefore, when you discard one set of beliefs and learn to apply another, there is indeed a period of stress during the transition between beliefs, in the process of old beliefs being replaced by new ones.

There is indeed a period of stress in between. But at this point:

As you compare your thoughts with the reality you seem to experience and check one against the other, you become involved in the most meaningful aspects of the nature of personal reality.

What aspects? Comparing and verifying. You compare your thoughts with the reality you seem to experience--which is actually what happens in the three-dimensional world. This can include your health, your external environment, your financial situation, and so on. When you make comparisons with these things, you will find that when those miracles happen, when magical changes occur, you become involved in one of the most meaningful aspects of the nature of personal reality. What aspect? Constantly observing the relationship between your thoughts and your experience of external reality. This is what is most meaningful and most valuable, and you need to keep thinking it through.

Changing a Belief Takes Twenty-One Days

Perhaps you need a period of time before you can learn to change your thoughts effectively. You may need a little time. But in any case, don't be too impatient, don't say, "I heard it today, so I'll change tomorrow." You can, but it takes time. Generally speaking, Seth later on -- I forget where -- he says that actually, to change a belief or to change a set of things, from Seth's perspective, generally you need a period of twenty-one days. That's why I made a twenty-one-day practice. Where does this point of twenty-one days come from? It actually comes from something Seth once said: generally, changing one belief takes twenty-one days before you can thoroughly change it. It's not that you hear it today and can change it tomorrow, because that belief has been deeply rooted for decades, and it's not as easy as you think. Because it will also defend itself and maintain itself, and in the process of maintaining itself, it still presents a lot of evidence to you. And when a new belief of yours is just beginning, that evidence is not obvious and not certain.

This effort you make to change your own beliefs is basically extremely meaningful. The matter of changing beliefs is basically extremely meaningful. He says the truth of the matter is:

Your reality is directly created by you.

He says this once again.

You react to your beliefs consciously and unconsciously.

Be sure to remember: you react to your beliefs consciously or unconsciously. Conscious means when we are awake; unconscious means those messages that come from inner information, belief sensing, clairvoyance -- they also undergo screening in your unconscious state.

You gather from the physical universe and the inner universe those materials that are related to your beliefs.

"Related" means corresponding to, in accord with. You gather these from the outer universe and the inner universe.

Then you must believe that you are by nature an unrestricted being, born into flesh in order to manifest as concretely as possible the great joy and spontaneity of your nature.

He says you must believe this: you are by nature a free and unrestricted being, you are a spiritual existence. The purpose of your being born into flesh is to manifest as concretely as possible the greatest joy and spontaneity of your nature.

Session 618

This session was held with the witness of Richard Bach⁴, author of Jonathan Livingston Seagull, and his editor Eleanor. They had originally planned to arrive on Tuesday to attend the ESP class, but were delayed by bad weather and only arrived yesterday (Wednesday). Richard had come to visit once at the end of August, when the first chapter of this book was just beginning.

Last night they started dinner very late, and afterward, as everyone lingered at the table continuing to talk, Jane delivered a rather long, informal session to the two guests. Richard recorded the session and promised to send us a transcript, so that excerpts from the material could be added to this session later.

Earlier this evening, Jane had sung Sumari songs quite spontaneously, but now, as she began to speak for Seth, her manner became very deliberate. When Jane sang Sumari songs spontaneously, she was very free and unrestrained; now, as she introduced the book for Seth, she was somewhat more measured.

Then Seth said: Let us continue with the dictation. Give us a moment.

Core Beliefs

Core beliefs are those beliefs upon which you build your life. Although you do not often focus your attention upon them, you are consciously aware of their existence.

Thus they become invisible, unless you begin to become aware of the contents of your conscious mind.

Seth is very clear here: we are basically aware of the existence of our core beliefs—otherwise we would not say that when it comes to falling in love, the three views must align, that one's outlook on life, worldview, and values must be compatible. If it were not important, why would we emphasize this point? So we do know of its existence, yet even while knowing it exists, we seldom perceive it clearly or very explicitly, or pay attention to it. But deep down we all know these three views are very important, and they do exist, and they do influence our experience of life.

To become aware of your own ideas and beliefs, you must take off the blinders and walk among them.

To use an analogy, it is like taking off the blinders and walking among them. To see clearly, you must see through the structures you yourself have created—what structures? Belief structures, that is, the organized ideas upon which you have assembled your experience. That is your belief system, the structure of your beliefs.

If you want to see your own mind clearly, you must first take apart the structure of your thoughts. Take the belief structure apart, follow the thoughts, but do not judge them—observe your own thoughts, concepts, and ideas without judging them, and do not compare them with your belief framework. If you do this, then you can see your mind clearly. Do not use your own beliefs to judge, to pass judgment saying "this part of me is such and such, that part is such and such."

Systematically organized beliefs collect and retain your experience.

You could say they package your experience. Therefore, when you see an experience that seems similar to another experience, you often incorporate it into the same packaged system without careful examination. That is, when you see similar experiences, you often do not look carefully, and directly classify them into similar experiences, placing them into the packaged system—you automatically categorize them.

Such beliefs often hide unexpected surprises. When you lift the cover off a certain belief, you may discover that it contains valuable material that was originally outside its scope. Because of your habits, and because of the strength of the core belief itself, core beliefs often automatically attract other similar beliefs to attach themselves to it. If you are not in the habit of examining your own mind, you may allow these attracted beliefs to grow on their own around the original belief, until you can no longer tell which is which.

That is, the beliefs have all become mixed together. They grow and proliferate automatically around the original belief, until in the end all of your experience is oriented around this cluster of ideas—a pile of beliefs tangled together like a thicket of grass or a clump of bushes. Then, any material that seems unrelated to this core belief is no longer digested and absorbed by you, but is tossed into a corner of your mind, unused. And you cut yourself off from the experience of such material. Certain parts of your mind can indeed accommodate this material; it is not lost, merely set aside and stored away. This material does not belong to the system of your habitual thinking; it is shelved. Although it remains within the reach of your consciousness, you look at it and do not see it.

Usually when you look into your conscious mind, you do so with a purpose—to find some material. But if you have taught yourself not to believe that you can consciously know such material, then you will not think to look for it in your conscious mind.

When you no longer believe you have it, when you have taught yourself not to believe this material exists, then you will not think to look for it. What is more, if all the material in your consciousness is firmly bound around a certain core belief, you automatically turn a blind eye to experiences that are unrelated to it.

Seth is saying the same idea over and over here: you can only accept ideas that are consistent with your core beliefs; anything inconsistent with your core beliefs, you simply do not see. The material is all there; you could access it, see it, find it—but you simply do not see it, and may even believe it does not exist.

Only when you take a core belief as a fact of life, rather than as a belief about life, can you see it. Only when you identify with it so completely that it leads you around by the nose can you see it.

In other words, the core beliefs you can see are, to you, facts. They are already leading you around by the nose, and only then can you see the core belief. So why do we ask you to write down all your core beliefs? Because you need to know what they do to you—to you, they are the facts of this world, what you call the truth of this world, the very things that lead you around by the nose.

Responsible Parents

Now let us take a core belief that appears completely innocuous.

I am a responsible father (or mother).

The vast majority of people hold this core belief; anyone who has been a parent holds such a belief. On the surface, there is nothing wrong with this belief. But if you insist on this belief without examining it, you may find that the word "responsible" carries quite a load—and it also collects other ideas you have likewise not examined. For example, what do you think "responsible" means? From your answer, you will discover whether this core belief is beneficial to you or not. You can ask yourself: what exactly does the word "responsible" mean?

If responsible means I must be a full-time mother and pay no attention to anything else—then you may be in trouble. Because that core belief prevents you from using other abilities that have nothing to do with motherhood. You may begin to view all physical material only through that core belief. You no longer look at the world with the heart of a child, or with the unhardened curiosity of an independent individual, but forever through the eyes of a mother. In this way, you inevitably cut yourself off from many physical experiences.

"The heart of a child" means the mindset of a newborn child, full of curiosity about the world. At this point, you cut yourself off from other physical experiences.

This is very normal; we see this kind of thing all the time in real life. For example, some people, after becoming mothers, have nothing left in their social media feeds but baby photos—all kinds of pictures of the child. No matter how she looks at the child, it is beautiful and good; looking at the child brings her boundless joy and delight, and her life is left with nothing but the child. Some mothers even stop paying much attention to their husbands or partners, pouring all their energy into the child—and we all know this already plants a major hidden danger in the family. Many mothers even sleep in separate beds from their husbands after having a child, sleeping in the same bed as the child, using caring for the child as the excuse. If you do that, it is only natural that your husband will eventually have emotional problems with you, or affairs, or something of the sort. When you pour all your energy into the child, you also harbor all kinds of resentment toward your husband: saying, look, you do not take care of the child, you do not manage the child, I am the only one managing and caring for the child, and you are still out there fooling around—she is full of grievances and feels deeply wronged.

Seth says many things very subtly. When Seth speaks, he is very refined and subtle; many things he does not say so bluntly or harshly. So let me translate what he said into something more blunt and harsher.

When you feel you must be a responsible mother or father, you have actually already cut yourself off from roles other than these two; other roles basically become less important. Some people still go to work, but the focus of their work is no longer there; while at work, their hearts are with their child, and all their work revolves around the child. They no longer go on business trips, and no longer take on jobs with heavy workloads. I am referring to a portion of people who hold this belief. The way they see things, the topics they discuss, all revolve around the child; their social circle is the child, and they can only discuss the child, showing no interest in other topics. Such mothers automatically grow further and further from society—because you have cut yourself off from society, identifying only with the role of mother and no longer recognizing any other role.

If you insist on this belief without examination, it will attract many other beliefs. And depending on the intensity and rigidity of this idea, and on whether you are willing to deal with it, you will also, through telepathy, attract unconscious material that conforms to this rigid pattern. You may further narrow your life.

You can no longer see any kind of material; your eyes only contain what a mother is supposed to see. Unless the material touches upon your life as a mother or father, you simply do not see it.

The core belief just mentioned is only one type. Once he digs this one out, will you discover that many of your core beliefs are problematic? The ideas you regard as facts, as absolutely correct, are actually all problematic. That is why this book by Seth ultimately becomes, for every person, a deep dissection of the soul.

Time as a Basic Assumption

Certain basic assumptions you hold are also core beliefs. Your basic assumptions are also beliefs; to you, they seem like definitions. They are so inseparable a part of you that you take them for granted.

Your idea of time is one of these. These basic assumptions are also your core beliefs. In your mind, you may find it rather enjoyable to toy with thoughts about time; you may find yourself thinking that time is basically different from your experience of it. Yet fundamentally, you still believe that you live within hours and years.

Although sometimes you may think that time might not be what you think it is, you still live within your own clocks and years—one week ends, and only then does the next week come. You are involuntarily dragged along by the rush of the seasons. Naturally, your physical experience reinforces this idea: the passage of years, the changing of seasons, reinforces your belief in time.

Therefore you structure perception in terms of the passage of time between events. This practice in itself forces you to focus in one direction only, and discourages you from thinking of perceiving life's events in other ways.

What this means is that, in your conception, you only think of events as happening one after another—you dismiss the idea of looking at events from other angles, believing that events can only be thought of as following one after another.

Occasionally you use association, one thought easily leading to another. When you do this, you often see new insights. In your mind, when events escape the continuity of time, they seem to be reborn.

This is association. Many people have a rich capacity for association; some people cannot associate, or their associative ability is very poor. When you associate, these events have already escaped the continuity of time, as if they have gained new life. Did not Seth say earlier that if you want to truly understand what is in your mind, you must first break apart your thoughts, break apart your belief structures? Here he gives an example: when you engage in association, you are breaking apart your thoughts. When you connect two completely unrelated things, you are rekindling the vitality of these events—the event is no longer the same event it was; it has been given new meaning and new life.

When you understand thought through association, you are quite close to freely examining the contents of your mind. But if you set aside the concept of time and view the contents of the mind through other core ideas, you are still organizing it. I am not saying you should never organize those contents, but that you must be fully aware of your own constructions. You may build or dismantle these constructions, but never allow yourself to be blind to the furniture of your mind.

Seth means this: when you use association, you have actually set aside the organizing role of time in the connections between things. You no longer organize them by time, but associate them according to the intrinsic connections between the events themselves, organizing them in a new way. He says he is not telling you not to organize it; he is telling you that you can organize it by time, or you can take it apart and organize it according to the intrinsic connections between the events themselves—and perhaps you can take that concept apart again and organize it in yet another way.

For example, when it comes to organizing events, using time is the most common method; most people organize events by time. But could you switch to another way of organizing your events? The so-called associative method: pick out the things that have stirred your heart the most, the things that made you weep, the things in your life that made you especially proud; pick out all the "firsts" that happened in your life, the ones that left the deepest impression on you; or pick out the key events in your relationship with a certain person—the turning points or progressions of the relationship—and organize and select them in that way. In other words, how you want to organize events is entirely your freedom; you have this freedom, you have this ability. Do not think that there is only one way to structure things.

Beliefs as Furniture

When you consider your beliefs to be obstructions, your toes will often stub against a misplaced idea—just as easily as against an old chair.

Just as in life you will encounter some unsuitable thoughts and ideas, some mistaken thoughts. This "misplaced" may mean that the idea was correct elsewhere, correct in your past experience, but is wrong in a new scene, a new environment.

A simple example: in intimate relationships, you often take views from the past and directly transfer your opinions of your ex-boyfriend or ex-girlfriend onto the present. You naturally think "why is he like this," "why are all men like this," "why are all women so vain"—you move negative emotions from one person onto another. You take outdated, untimely ideas and apply them to the present without examining them, without testing them, too lazy to do so. You use a fixed set of thought patterns to deal with everything, feeling that this saves effort, because you do not have to constantly adjust yourself or reflect on yourself. But the environment around you, the people and things you face, are changing all the time, and you have lost the ability to face things with your genuine feelings of the present moment. Using a rigid, fixed belief system to respond to an external environment that is changing at every moment—this is the root of the problems that arise. So he says, some old ideas, misplaced ideas, are like old furniture that you often stub your toe against in life—"stub against" means it gets in your way, this mistaken idea affects you.

In fact, it will help you if you think of your beliefs as furniture. You can rearrange them, remodel them, refurbish them, or even throw them all out and replace them with new ones.

Thinking of beliefs as furniture is very helpful to you. Beliefs can be recombined, rearranged, combined in all sorts of ways; beliefs can also be changed, refurbished—if some old furniture is no good, or some old beliefs are no good, just throw them out and replace them. When you arrange furniture in your home, you already have a concept in mind: if you are not satisfied with the furniture, you can replace it; if you are dissatisfied with a particular piece, you can change it. Even changing its color will produce a different effect.

The simplest principle: suppose the furniture in your home was bought from IKEA or somewhere else. If you no longer like it, you can try the simplest method—buy a can of spray paint online, the kind you shake and spray directly, and change it to a color you like. Do not think that whatever color it was when you bought it, it has to stay that color forever; you can change it according to your mood. That stuff is very cheap; buy a can of paint and spray it, and the color of the furniture changes immediately, which can greatly change your whole mood. Color has a very strong influence on people; you will gradually come to realize this—color itself carries energy. So when you are dissatisfied with a piece of furniture or something, this is the simplest method. Seth's words go even further: you can move it to a different position, replace it with a new one—if you do not like it, if you keep stubbing your toe on it, if you keep bumping into it every day as you walk by, why is it still sitting there?

Your ideas are your own, just as your furniture is your own. They should not control you, just as furniture should not block your way. You have the right to accept which ideas you will.

So imagine yourself rearranging this furniture. Images of certain pieces of furniture will come to you—that is, some new beliefs may come to you. Ask yourself what ideas those pieces of furniture represent; see whether the tables go well together—that is, whether your beliefs match each other, whether there is self-consistency and coherence between your beliefs and ideas; open the drawers and look inside—opening the drawers of the furniture means opening the beliefs themselves, lifting the cover off the beliefs, and looking at the specific content inside the beliefs, not just their surface.

There is nothing mysterious here. You know what your beliefs are. Seeing those clusters of beliefs is a matter of deciding whether to look deeply into your own mind, and to use those mental images in your own way.

Which mental images? The ones in which you regard your beliefs as furniture, and throw out the ideas that do not suit you. They may have suited you once, may even have helped you once, but they are outdated now, not in line with the present situation, the present people and events—throw them out.

If you accept this suggestion, find such an idea in your mind, and then say to yourself: "I cannot throw this idea away." When you discover a negative emotion, a negative concept, and you say "there is no way, I cannot throw this away, I have known this for a long time, I have known it since childhood"—but you must understand that the thought "I cannot throw this idea away" is itself a belief.

You should first throw away this second idea.

That is, first throw away the idea "I cannot throw away my beliefs." If you cannot throw away this idea, how can you throw away those beliefs? And when you say "I cannot throw away my beliefs," throwing away this belief is no more difficult than throwing away any one of your beliefs—it is also one of the beliefs.

In other words, throwing away those erroneous, fixed, limiting, negative beliefs is very easy; it is not as complicated as you think, as long as you truly set your hands to doing it. It is like a messy home: if you truly set your hands to changing it, it is very easy; but if you keep standing there without doing anything, looking at the mess, you do not know where to begin, and you may even feel it cannot be cleaned up. But once you actually start working on it, it is not that much; just calm down and slowly tidy it up, and everything becomes clear at once. The entire inner environment and outer environment are the same; it is not that complicated. When you change this concept, everything changes.

You are by no means helpless before your own ideas.

Because they are all things you can change at any time. Using the analogy just now, you will certainly discover some furniture that surprises you—you will definitely find some unexpected pieces of furniture that you never noticed. Therefore, do not only look at the center of the inner room of your consciousness; you must remember to watch out for those things I mentioned earlier, the things you look at and do not see.

What is "the center of the inner room of your consciousness"? Those thoughts like "I am a good person," "on the whole I am not bad," "my values do not have any major problems"—these things will cover up other problems. What you need to pay attention to is not this, but those things that are clearly within reach, yet seem to be part of reality itself. Pay attention to those things you look at and do not see, yet which seem to be part of reality.

Combinations and Supports of Beliefs

The organization of belief clusters is formed in a highly characteristic yet very personal manner. Within the various highly personal combinations, you will find that a pattern exists, by which one can be found from another.

Because everyone is different; it is entirely personal. Within your own individualized characteristics, you will find a pattern—you can find one belief from another. He gives another example:

For instance, the idea of "being a responsible father or mother" can easily lead you into other mental structures related to responsibility. You decide which material to accept according to the value of this idea.

In other words, when you say "I want to be a responsible father or mother," the belief of "responsibility" itself determines how you define "a responsible father or mother." If your belief about "responsibility" is itself incorrect—overly responsible, or responsible for the wrong things—then the belief of "being a responsible parent" itself will be problematic.

You may even come to believe that from any standpoint other than that of a parent, every situation appears wrong. This is a very dangerous situation.

In this case, you may sometimes even believe that considering a problem from any angle other than that of a parent is wrong. Let me give an example: many people see parents letting their children urinate or defecate in the subway, or in shopping malls, or in public places, and the parents are very self-righteous—when others point it out, not only do they not think it is wrong, they even argue back with conviction: "What if the child cannot hold it? You cannot let the child wet his pants or soil his pants." They have a whole pile of reasons and justifications, and may even react with intense defensiveness. At this point we know that all of his beliefs and viewpoints are considered from the standpoint of a parent; he does not consider that he is also a social person—that he has a social nature, and that there are also matters of public health and social ethics. He does not think these still exist; his mind only contains the thought "I am a mother, I cannot let my child suffer."

Therefore, the belief in guilt acts like cement, binding together other similar core beliefs.

What is said here is a commentary on the sentence above—guilt is actually also incorrect.

You must understand that these beliefs are not dead beliefs, lying in your mind like rubble after a destruction—they are not dead. They are alive, in a sense living. Like cells, they cluster together, protecting their own validity and identity. In other words, you feed them with similar ideas. Therefore, when you examine any one of these beliefs, you obviously threaten the integrity of the whole structure.

You must remember that these beliefs themselves are not dead, not waiting to be swept away like cleaning up a room. They are alive, and very much alive; they will defend their own identity, defend their own validity, and even protect themselves and resist you. When you want to clear away a belief, it is not so easy—it will fight back, it will resist. You have been feeding them with ideas that are the same as the belief itself.

These similar beliefs support one another, reinforce one another, and prove one another. When you try to touch one of them, the others will push back, because they support and validate each other.

Therefore, you have methods by which you can insert new supports to carry you through difficult periods. When you examine the foundation of the entire core belief, it does not necessarily all have to collapse upon you.

His point is: when we examine a core belief, find that it has problems, and want to replace it, if our inner strength is not sufficient, then the moment this core belief is pulled out, the entire belief system collapses -- because it is the pillar supporting the existence of your inner world. Many people, if you ask them why they live: "I live for my family," "I live to have a better life," "I live for the people who love me," "I live for my children." If you examine these carefully, they are your core beliefs. Once you replace these core beliefs, your belief system has no pillar left.

At this point Seth says that a better approach is: first use an opposite belief to prop it up, do not let it collapse, and only then can you replace them one by one. You may not get there in one step, but you can gradually replace them. It does not necessarily have to collapse -- if your inner strength is sufficient, and you want to overturn everything and start over, you can do that, but most people cannot manage it. What is more feasible is to use some beliefs as substitutes, gradually, step by step. Later he will tell you the specific methods for replacing them; we will not go into that here.

Closing

He says: let us stop here for now. He says to Elena and Richard: I would be willing to speak faster for you, but because it has to be written down, I have to go a little slower. At 10:46, Jane had already come back. She said we were glad that on several occasions when the book was being dictated there were other people present -- they actually also hoped to have other people witness it.

The rest of the session was given over to our guests. Seth's manner became more cheerful, and the pace quickened considerably, because they were all discussing personal matters. At around 12:30, they ended.

Supplementary Notes

Richard Bach had always felt that Jonathan Livingston Seagull was not written by himself. By now the process of that book's gestation is also widely known: late one night in 1959, Richard was walking beside a small canal on the West Coast⁵ when he suddenly heard a voice say "Jonathan Livingston Seagull⁶." He looked around and saw no one, and was badly startled. On the way home, that voice inspired some images, and in the form of three-dimensional space (in a three-dimensional way, such as images and words) it gave him most of the book's content. He was even more astonished. Then it stopped abruptly. Richard tried to finish the manuscript on his own, but after writing half of it he could not succeed, and then there was no further movement. Not until eight years later, one day⁷, did he suddenly wake up and hear that voice again, which brought the second half of the book.

Richard did not claim to be the author. When he saw The Seth Material⁸, he felt that Jane's experience was similar to his, so he came to see her -- he felt that Jane had also written things through a channeling process. Of course, the two experiences were related, except that in Jane's case it was not just a voice that appeared, but an entire personality came through: the entire Seth personality came through, and while Jane was in an altered state of consciousness he spoke and wrote the book himself. Therefore both she and Richard were extremely interested in how Seth would explain this phenomenon.

In addition, Jane's novel The Oversoul Seven trilogy⁹ was also completed under similar but different circumstances. In the preface to this book she described the process involved, along with a description of the process of writing some of her poems. For Jane, when she wrote The Oversoul Seven trilogy and when she wrote poetry, that state of consciousness was a different facet of the same highly accelerated creativity (in the appendix of Seth Speaks there is a description of how, during the channeling process, Jane's consciousness seemed to be accelerating). These creations ultimately transcended themselves -- transcended that state of consciousness -- and entered levels of reality that we do not yet clearly understand. Related to this question are also automatic writing, painting, singing, and composing. This kind of phenomenon often appears in society: some people suddenly write things automatically, or automatically draw a picture. There is a person in our group who is like this -- while listening to the Seth material, he can unconsciously draw pictures, and those pictures carry very deep inner energy.

Seth on the Source of Creativity

The following is a quotation of what Seth said to Richard and the other guests on the evening of September 27, 1972. He was explaining how Richard Bach's Jonathan Livingston Seagull was actually written, and who was actually doing the writing -- and this explanation also applies to other people's creative activities that go beyond their conscious creative abilities.

Material does not exist by itself alone. The consciousness of all those who understand it, perceive it, and originate it is connected with it.

This material itself is not an isolated thing, not like a book sitting dead on a library shelf. This material is connected with the consciousness that understands it, perceives it, or originates it -- according to our usual understanding, material is only connected with the person who originated it; whoever wrote it, whoever created it, it belongs to them. But Seth says no, it is even connected with the consciousness of those who understand it and perceive it.

Therefore there is no objective, eternally available material, no databank-like record to which you can attune and receive.

What is called objective is something unchanging, something you can attune to and receive -- there is no such material. Material is not the way you think, sitting there waiting for you to adjust your frequency and receive it.

On the contrary, the consciousness that holds this information in the past, present, or future attracts it to itself like a magnet attracts iron. The information itself also wishes to draw close to consciousness. It is not a dead or inert thing. It is not only something you want to grasp; it is also willing to be grasped by you. Thus it is drawn toward those who seek it.

Material is not dead; it is not only something you want to grasp, it is also willing to be grasped by you -- it is as if it has its own consciousness. So a lot of material naturally pops out on its own. Many people say, "I was never very interested in spiritual things, but then somehow Seth's material suddenly appeared in front of me," or "I do not know how, as if by some mysterious force, I came across related spiritual material" -- these things are very wondrous, and you cannot describe them; it is as if they were attracted to you.

Your consciousness will attract the consciousness that is already connected with that material. That is one of the good things I am giving you tonight.

It is the same principle as like attracting like.

Then when information is interpreted by a new consciousness, it becomes new again, just like the book Jonathan Livingston Seagull. Your inner portion uses those abilities that have always existed, interpreting this information through the kaleidoscope of your own being, using the best parts of yourself, and thus produces a brilliant truth wearing new clothes. But no one can give it these new clothes except yourself. Now I want to tell you, if you think Jonathan Livingston Seagull was written by someone else, then you deny the excellence within yourself.

These two sentences of Seth's are expressed in almost poetic language. In simple terms: your inner self receives this information, but your inner self interprets it through the kaleidoscope of your being, using your best, most essential parts, and produces a brilliant truth wearing new clothes. That information is as if it has put on a new set of clothes, and these new clothes are made by the inner self after interpreting the information through the best parts of you, like a brilliant truth. No one can give it these new clothes except yourself, because it uses the best parts of you.

The originality and uniqueness of this truth are provided by your own inner portion. That inner portion may now be so far removed from your conscious self that it appears to be separate from you.

This content, this information, does indeed come from outside; it is something given to you, but its originality and uniqueness are provided by your inner portion. Only after your inner portion connects with higher-dimensional things can it obtain such truth, such information. And because the conscious self is too far from that inner portion, you feel that it is separate from you, as if it came from outside.

Other things are involved here as well. Not just the birth of a book.

Be sure to remember, it is not just the birth of a book. Writing a book is a form of artistic creation, and within it there are two layers of birth: first, the birth of a book; second, the birth of the inner self manifesting into the physical world through artistic expression. In other words, this book is the manifestation of the inner self in the physical world. Just like Seth Speaks and the book being written now, including all the material Seth has transmitted, it is a process of Seth manifesting in this world through Jane from another time and space -- it is the same meaning.

Now the focus and power of this book come in part from the two births, and from the intensity that follows them.

The power and focus of this book come from these two births, and from the intensity that follows these two births -- it actually comes from the manifestation of inner power, and the intensity behind it determines why this book's arrival into the world has had such a great impact. These two are united as one in this book.

You are looking for the author of Jonathan Livingston Seagull, and I tell you, he is far away yet right before your eyes. I am looking at him. He may not be the face you see when you look in the mirror. It is only because you cannot see your true self in the mirror. But I am looking at the full visible extent of this book's author. And you should be the one who knows him best. In the years to come, I will tell you how to know him and become familiar with him.

The person who is "far away yet right before your eyes" is not the face in the mirror, but the real you -- that inner self, the whole self. Because you cannot see your true self in the mirror, you think that author is not you. You should be the one who knows him best -- that inner self should be the one you know best. Just as with yourself, you are the one who knows yourself best.

Ruburt has already begun to take steps in this regard. Therefore I did not dampen his enthusiasm.

Ruburt had already begun doing this kind of thing long ago -- writing articles, writing poems, writing novels, so Seth says he did not dampen his enthusiasm, and let him go about it on his own.

Your own consciousness does have different facets. They operate in entirely different environments. You are both a pilot (a fighter pilot) and a person who can write such a beautiful book... such as those nonphysical (environments). Therefore there are facets within you that know much other information of various kinds, information that your present conscious facet cannot obtain.

Because Richard Bach was a fighter pilot¹⁰, and he always had an airplane nearby; no matter where he lived he had to have an airplane, and when he had nothing to do he would fly out for a spin, soaring in the sky. Why is it called Jonathan Livingston Seagull? This comes from a line of Du Fu's poetry. If you want to look it up, you can search for the source of the poem "A solitary gull between heaven and earth." The line before it seems to be "drifting with nowhere to return," and then "a solitary gull between heaven and earth." At that time Du Fu felt that he was constantly being transferred here to serve as an official, then demoted there, then sent somewhere else, and at such an old age he was still rushing about every day. In those days, traveling from one place to another might often take ten days to half a month, or even one or two months, and he felt he was drifting every day, unable to find a sense of belonging, like a bird between heaven and earth. The translator of Jonathan Livingston Seagull had a very literary sensibility, and used such a title. This book's sales in Europe and America are second only to the Bible¹¹ -- you can imagine how highly it is regarded.

So your consciousness has different facets, and they operate in entirely different environments: you are both a pilot and someone who can write such a beautiful bestseller. Within your inner self, there are facets that know much other information of various kinds, information that the present conscious level cannot obtain, but the inner self can obtain it -- so the inner self of the author of Jonathan Livingston Seagull obtained this information and then manifested it.

Note that Seth here acknowledges Jane's theory of "facets."

Jane was planning to begin writing a book on this theme, in which she would devote part of the discussion to where this Seth personality comes from, what his essence is, and how real he is; in addition, she would also discuss the "intrusion" of intuitive and inspirational material. Once again, please look at her preface -- that preface is quite long, several dozen pages, and if you are interested you can turn to the front and read it. It is more a description of Jane's own personal growth process: the preface of each of her books marks a period, and the changes in her inner journey during that period. If you want to understand Jane's development as a person, and her personal changes during the transmission of the Seth material, you can read her prefaces carefully.

Session 619

This session is very short. They went to the northern part of New York, and then they came back. On the way she received some material about imagination and belief, and felt that Seth was preparing this book. Then the session content itself begins very briefly.

Seth said: Unless you have something in particular you want me to discuss, we will begin the dictation. No, go ahead. Then he said: Give us a moment, please.

In your subjective life, imagination also plays a very important role. For it gives your beliefs their mobility. Your beliefs are transformed into physical experience through the aid of various impelling mediums.

This passage serves as an opening for the next chapter, and he brings "imagination" into it. Imagination plays a very important role. Your beliefs -- those ideas, values, all sorts of thoughts -- can truly be transformed into physical experience, realized and put into practice in real life, only with the help of impelling mediums, and imagination is one of those impelling mediums. In other words, when you have a belief, it is only something theoretical, something within the belief structure; to turn that belief into a physical experience you can actually experience in life, you cannot do without your imagination. Imagination is its vitality, the driving force behind it.

Therefore, your understanding of the interrelationship between ideas and imagination is of the utmost importance. In order to rid yourself of inappropriate beliefs and establish new ones, you must learn to use your imagination.

The content of this book is meant to help you establish new beliefs and rid yourself of inappropriate ones, and in this process you must learn to use your imagination -- use this imagination to move those ideas and beliefs in and out of your mind, just like rearranging furniture in your home.

The proper use of imagination can push ideas in the direction you want them to go.

So you can see how important this imagination is.

Chapter Notes

After Chapter Three there are just some notes. Broadly speaking, what Seth calls the whole self has a rather large scope: reincarnational and probable personalities are only two of the ideas involved — the whole self includes many things, and reincarnational personalities and probable personalities are only two of them; it also includes many more.

What is absolutely beyond doubt is that every lesson we take adds to our recognition of the whole self's ceaseless, moment-by-moment expansion and growth.

Every time you take a Seth session, you expand a part of your recognition of the whole self.

All right, the third part of our reading of Chapter Three is now fully concluded. Next time we will begin the reading of Chapter Four.

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注释与核实

1. Source: Changjiang Net, "Internet Celebrity Xinba Donates 150 Million Yuan to Help Wuhan Fight the Epidemic, 50 Million Yuan Already Received" (2020) (http://news.cjn.cn/sywh/202001/t3546577.htm) ↩

2. According to Mike's original words, "Before Li Jiaqi became popular, he spent three years doing livestreaming with no one watching."; upon verification, it should be "Li Jiaqi debuted in 2016 through L'Oréal and MeiONE's host selection, began livestreaming on Taobao in 2017, and by the end of that year his annual income had already reached about 1.53 million US dollars. In 2018 he became fully famous as the 'Lipstick King'—the quiet period with no viewers lasted only the first few months, not 'three years with no one watching.'" (Source: Wikipedia, "Li Jiaqi (beauty influencer)", https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Li_Jiaqi_(beauty_influencer)) ↩

3. Source: Wikipedia, "The Guitar (film)" (https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/The_Guitar_(film)) ↩

4. Source: Wikipedia, "Jonathan Livingston Seagull" (https://zh.wikipedia.org/zh-hk/%E5%A4%A9%E5%9C%B0%E4%B8%80%E6%B2%99%E9%B7%97) ↩

5. Source: TIME, "It's a Bird! It's a Dream! It's Supergull!" (https://time.com/archive/6844312/its-a-bird-its-a-dream-its-supergull/) ↩

6. Source: Wikipedia, "Jonathan Livingston Seagull" (https://zh.wikipedia.org/zh-hk/%E5%A4%A9%E5%9C%B0%E4%B8%80%E6%B2%99%E9%B7%97) ↩

7. Source: Wikipedia, "Jonathan Livingston Seagull" (https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Jonathan_Livingston_Seagull) ↩

8. Source: Jane Roberts, "The Seth Material" (https://www.books.com.tw/products/0010486800) ↩

9. Source: The Seth Educational Foundation, "Oversoul Seven Series One: Journey Through Past Lives" (https://www.seth.org.tw/publication/35) ↩

10. Source: Wikipedia, "Richard Bach" (https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Richard_Bach) ↩

11. According to Mike's original words, "This book's sales in Europe and America are second only to the Bible"; upon verification, it should be "The record set by Jonathan Livingston Seagull is: in 1972 alone, hardcover sales exceeded one million copies in one year, making it the best-selling hardcover book since Gone with the Wind, and it long topped the New York Times bestseller list, rather than 'sales second only to the Bible.'" (Source: Wikipedia, "Jonathan Livingston Seagull", https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Jonathan_Livingston_Seagull) ↩