Mike's commentary · The Nature of Personal Reality, Chapter 4

The "Reading Guide" and "Chapter Highlights" for this chapter were summarized by an AI editor based on the main text below; they are not things Mike said 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

Chapter 4 explains that in physical life the conscious mind depends on the brain, and experience is filtered through the brain; beliefs mostly originate in childhood, inherited from one's parents, but one need not be bound by them for life. This chapter points out that emotions and imagination follow beliefs, and beliefs form personal reality; it uses the example of Rob's stiff hands to illustrate that unexamined belief conflicts can trigger physical and mental symptoms, and introduces the method of examining and replacing beliefs with a playful attitude, drawing on emotions and imagination, while also discussing the relationship between the conscious mind and the inner self, and the impact of changing beliefs on interpersonal relationships.

Key Points of This Chapter

• Emotions and imagination follow beliefs; beliefs form personal reality.
• Beliefs accepted from parents in childhood serve a protective function early on, but one need not remain bound by them for life.
• Unexamined conflicting beliefs can trigger physical and mental symptoms; examining beliefs is the first step toward changing experience.
• To change beliefs, one can make use of opposite emotions and opposite imagination, and play with the conscious mind in a spirit of game.
• The resources of the inner self are freely at the disposal of the conscious mind; the conscious mind issues commands, and the inner self carries them out. Changing beliefs will affect interpersonal relationships and may meet with resistance from old groups.

Main Text

From the very beginning of this chapter, Seth gives the title of Chapter Four: "Your Imagination and Your Beliefs." Then he explains that in your physical life -- physical life meaning our bodily life, our material life -- your conscious mind mainly relies on your physical brain to function. Whether inside the body or outside the body, you always have a conscious mind, but when you are oriented toward physical life, the conscious mind must necessarily be connected to the physical brain.

In other words, when your conscious mind is oriented toward physical life, it is linked to your brain. To a certain extent, the brain keeps your mind -- that is, this mind -- focused in three-dimensional space, giving it a focus in the three-dimensional world, positioning you within the environment in which you must operate. Precisely because the mind is so loyal to the physical brain, for example, you perceive time as a series of moments.

The reason you perceive time as one moment after another is because of your mind's loyalty to the brain, or rather its subservience to the brain as a physical organ. This is due to the structure of your brain's nerves -- your brain's nerves operate through the process of transmitting information between neurons. In the process of neural transmission, information certainly passes from one nerve cell to the next, through the synapses, with a transmitting medium in between. This transmitting medium is composed of very minute chemical elements, and the process by which this transmitting medium passes between the synapses of two nerve cells is what gives you this neural perception.

So such a transmission leads to the passage of time. From the synapse of one cell to the synapse of the next nerve cell, in the process of neurotransmitter transmission, the time consumed, the moment experienced -- only then can you feel that "this is a moment."

Therefore, our perception of the existence of time in the material world -- this "moment" -- is jointly determined by our physical brain, our physical sensory system, and our physical nervous system. It is determined by hardware: with such perception, you can only perceive time as existing in this continuous manner; you cannot go back, nor can you turn back time. Because your synapses cannot transmit in reverse either; they can only follow the direction of the nerves, transmitting sequentially according to the direction of neural transmission, with both ascending and descending pathways in such a process. So this leads to a deeply rooted confirmation of the concept of time in your brain, and this concept comes from here.

He says, your brain transmits the data received by the mind to the bodily structure. Your brain conveys the data received by the mind to the bodily structure, and therefore:

Your experience is physically filtered, and only then automatically becomes something your organism can understand.

Seth emphasized this point by rapping on the coffee table between them. This sentence is actually a summary that captures the essential point. What summary? It is about the relationship between your brain and your consciousness. The "mind" here refers to your conscious mind, that is, your thoughts, your mentality. Because this translation is difficult to convey its meaning completely accurately in different contexts, this "mind" is translated as "mentality" in many places, and sometimes there is also the term "conscious mind."

The "mind" he refers to here is broader in scope than the conscious mind. You can understand it this way: the mind can be understood as a consciousness -- the entirety of your consciousness can be called the mind. But actually it cannot be understood this way either, because there is much of consciousness that you cannot perceive, so you do not know it. So let us just use our ordinary human understanding and say it is your mind. How the mind is, and so on -- all of this is represented by the mind.

Why does he not use the brain to represent it? When we express ourselves, we often say "I love you with all my heart"; no one says "I love you with my brain, I love you with my brain every moment, I love you with my nerve cells." No one says that; we all say we love with our heart. Why use the heart? Let us not get entangled in this question; if we get too entangled, it becomes a pure word game and loses its meaning. You just need to roughly understand it.

The meaning to understand is this: the various data your conscious mind receives -- there is external data and internal data -- whether external or internal, it requires the brain to receive it. That is, your brain, at the level of your conscious awareness, that is, at the level of your surface consciousness, transmits what your conscious mind receives to your bodily structure, and then directs the bodily structure to take certain actions, certain movements.

He says that in this process, your experience is physically filtered. What does "physical" refer to? It refers to material filtering. What is the material? It is your brain; it is filtered through your brain. The experiences you obtain, whether internal telepathy, or clairvoyance, or data transmitted from deeper levels of consciousness -- internal data -- and also external data, what your eyes, nose, and ears perceive, the six sense objects of this world obtained through your six sense organs, all of this is received and perceived through your brain.

Therefore, your brain itself is a physical structure, a material structure. It is composed of countless nerve cells. The human brain has approximately 100 billion nerve cells, neurons¹. The human body has approximately 50 trillion cells²; an adult human body is composed of approximately 50 trillion cells², while your brain has approximately 100 billion nerve cells.

So all of your experience -- whether internal or external, whether emotional, whether implicit, whether consciously known or unknown -- must be filtered through this thing called the brain. But you may not know how this filtering process works, but only after this filtering can it automatically become something your organism can understand, something your physical body can understand.

Seth said this while rapping on the table. He said:

For this reason, physically speaking, while you are human, the mind is largely dependent upon the growth and activity of the brain.

Here "physically" refers to the physical, the bodily, in physical terms. From the material standpoint, while you are human, while you still have a physical body, your mind -- your consciousness -- largely, he says largely, not entirely, depends on the growth and activity of your brain.

So this is why we need to learn, why we need to train our brains. Although consciousness can exist without depending on the brain, consciousness is something beyond the brain, but while you still have a physical body, your brain is what you must rely upon, what you must depend upon. So we need to learn, we need to train our brains, because all of your experience must be perceived through this material thing called the brain before you can understand it.

He says there is certain knowledge necessary for sustaining life, taught by parents to children, passed on to children. You have certain general basic assumptions that are innate; we are born with certain basic assumptions that do not need to be taught. For example, any newborn baby will instinctively perform the act of nursing; it does not need to be taught; no one teaches it to nurse; it does so instinctively. If you have had children at home, you know this; they do it instinctively, their little mouths moving, searching everywhere for the mother's nipple to nurse, or if you give them a bottle nipple, it is the same.

However, because each person's environment is different, and the individual circumstances of each person's environment are so different, each person's living conditions are different, these basic assumptions must be implemented under practical considerations. Therefore, it is necessary for children to accept their parents' beliefs. Because each family environment is different, and the national conditions, society, and the physical three-dimensional world environment in which each person lives are completely different.

For example, a child living in Africa and a child living in another developed country, or a child living in a very cold region -- such as an Eskimo child -- and a child living in a tropical desert, the survival education their parents give them may be completely opposite, completely different. So at this time, as a child, you certainly must accept some of your parents' beliefs.

He is actually analyzing how your beliefs come about; he is analyzing it bit by bit. This matter is rather complex, not that simple, so he analyzes it rather slowly. He says that when the child most needs protection, learning from the parents strengthens the cohesion of the family. Because the child must depend on the parents, so the child must learn from them, and this becomes the cohesion of the entire family.

Now, this default acceptance of parental beliefs -- we basically accept our parents' beliefs by default -- is extremely important in the early period from infancy to childhood. From infancy to childhood, roughly from birth until elementary school, this process is extremely important. Because sharing common ideas in this way -- parents share their ideas with you -- not only protects the new offspring, allowing the offspring to survive, keeping them away from dangers obvious in the parents' eyes, but also provides a framework within which the child can grow.

What framework? A survival environment, a psychological framework. Because the child can only grow within such a framework. He explains below why such a framework is needed, why such a framework system of parental beliefs is needed. He says:

This framework provides room for the child to grow until his conscious mind can reason for itself and have its own value judgments.

Before this, the child mainly depends on the parents. He says:

I will speak later about the larger aspects of the origin of ideas; for now we will only look at this one life.

This "ideas" refers to where your thoughts, your notions, your consciousness come from. He says let us not talk about reincarnation, or the soul, or where the ideas of the larger whole self come from; let us not talk about that for now; let us just talk about where the thoughts of this one life come from.

Therefore, the beliefs you accept are your parents' views on the nature of reality -- views on the nature of reality are called beliefs. Through example, conversation, and constant telepathy. We often say parents are the child's first and best teachers; verbal instruction is conversation, teaching by example is the role of example. Telepathy is something human science has not yet recognized, but we can feel the inner connection between children and parents, and the parents' silent teaching is also included in this.

You accept your parents' beliefs, which include general ideas about this world -- that is, how they perceive this world -- as well as ideas about your relationship with this world, and their thoughts about you and your relationship with this world. Also, you inherit from them the concept of what I am. This is very crucial; it is why a person born as a human must also inherit the concept of "what I am."

This is also why some children who were raised by wolf packs as babies, or cared for by wild animals, find it very difficult to return to human society after a few years. Of course, there are successful cases and failed cases. One of the main reasons here, as Seth has already explained, is this: after the child has grown, he lacks such a framework for growth. They lack the process by which parents transmit beliefs to children and let children inherit parental beliefs. Because there is no human presence, and no parental presence, there is no such framework system. A child raised among wolves does not have this kind of human psychological framework system and belief framework system, so the child cannot obtain these things, cannot establish these things.

And during this critical period from infancy to childhood -- he writes "extremely important," do you see? He writes "extremely important." You cannot ignore any sentence or paragraph here; what he is saying is a core matter of the development of all humanity, of our mental growth and belief growth.

So there is a typical problem here. We often say that in real life, children who did not grow up by their parents' side, or those from single-parent families, or orphans, will be affected to a certain degree in their growth process. We say that the view of blaming everything on parents and the family of origin is incorrect, but we must acknowledge that this kind of deficiency in childhood does have certain deficiencies and certain negative effects on the growth period. This is a fact; we cannot deny it.

But we say that the error in the family-of-origin viewpoint lies in this: you can change these things. It is indeed an unfortunate childhood and a deficiency in your early years, but it cannot become a reason or excuse for limiting your own development later on. You still have great initiative and free will to change these things. But the premise is that we must acknowledge that these things do exist.

So you inherit the concept of "what I am" from your parents. This "what I am" includes both the family imprint -- whose family's child are you, you are the sole heir of our family, you are our precious daughter, and so on, this kind of family concept -- and also the concept of being a member of the entire human species. He will suggest it, he will instill it in you. This subtle instillation is: "You are human, that is a monkey, that is an elephant, that is an animal, you are different from them; you are you, those are small animals, those are plants," and so on. These concepts have already instilled in you what you are; without your realizing it, you already know what you are.

You may remember an example I gave in Seth Speaks, an experiment, about an anthropologist who studied the process of raising his own child together with chimpanzees and the problems he eventually encountered. He actually wanted to verify how much influence the external environment has on a child growing up, in the process of growing from infancy.

He says your views of yourself and of this world are inherited from your parents' ideas. This is very crucial; it influences you subtly, and you inherit their beliefs. However:

Beneath all these surface ideas, your inner self still indelibly carries the knowledge of your own entity and identity, your meaning and purpose, but in the early stages of your growth, they carefully keep you from knowing it.

Beneath these surface ideas -- what surface ideas? The concepts your parents give you, these beliefs, this influence your parents give you -- beneath these surface influences, you still have an indelible entity identity, and your purpose, meaning, and knowledge for this life all exist. But in the early stages, they carefully prevent you from becoming disconnected from survival in the physical world. In the early stages, they do not manifest, letting you focus on the physical world -- how to eat, how to play, how to grow, how to grow up.

You receive from your parents these beliefs with a certain guiding nature, guiding you in directions they feel are safe. Under the shelter of such beliefs, the child can be safe, satisfy his curiosity, develop his abilities, and devote all his energy to that clearly defined sphere of activity -- what sphere of activity? Physical activity, the sphere of the material world. Things of the non-material world, they will not let you explore, will not discuss with you.

But at this time, this parental guidance is also very important. Many children, as we say, a newborn calf is not afraid of a tiger; children have nothing to fear. But parents will tell them that this thing is scary, this thing cannot be touched, this is hot water, this is boiling water, do not touch it, it is very hot; that is chili pepper, do not eat it, it will be spicy; and so on. They will tell you that thing cannot be played with, you cannot climb that tree, you will fall and get hurt, you cannot climb over walls, absolutely do not climb over that railing, you will fall and die. Parents give children many things, and these things are very beneficial to the child's growth, helping them avoid various dangers and risks.

But this cannot be excessive; if it is excessive, it will restrict the child. Many times, for example, children are not actually afraid of riding roller coasters, those thrilling rides; they think it is fun. But many children, because of their parents' worry and scare tactics -- the parents' own fear of such things -- end up not daring to ride them either. Many children say "I dare not ride this, I am afraid of heights, I am scared"; if you analyze it carefully, they are actually being led by their parents. In other words, basically if the parents dare not ride a roller coaster, the children dare not either; it is basically like this. And then the children they have, their children still dare not ride it, because they have kept inheriting this belief.

In such cases, their original intention is good, to protect the child, but it cannot be excessive. So this attitude of default acceptance of beliefs is necessary -- default acceptance of what kind of beliefs? Default acceptance of parental beliefs, especially when a child is young.

But a person has no reason to bind himself to the beliefs or experiences of childhood. What does "bind" mean? It means taking the experiences of childhood and the beliefs of childhood -- those beliefs inherited from parents -- and binding them to one's entire life. Once past the childhood period, he should cast them off. If he does not cast them off, what does he become? We often say mama's boys, mama's girls, adult babies; these are all such states. That is, he keeps tightly holding onto the beliefs of his childhood or infancy.

Many beliefs are like this: "I must satisfy myself; if I am not satisfied, I will cry and throw a tantrum; I must be satisfied immediately, right now." These are all typical symptoms. This is very obvious, especially in younger people and in families with better conditions. When parental education has failed in some cases, the child's patience is extremely poor: when cold, he immediately wants heat; when hot, he immediately wants the air conditioner on; when the air conditioner makes him cold again, he immediately wants it off; when hungry, he immediately wants to eat, not wanting to wait even a minute, wanting to eat right away; when not hungry, he will not eat at all. All of it is the most instinctive, most basic, childlike reactions. When unhappy, he immediately cries, and it is easy to satisfy him; as long as his demands are met, he immediately becomes happy, tears turning to smiles. This is a child's belief system.

Do not bring this with you. He says do not keep carrying it; once it is past, it is past. The nature of such beliefs is that although you can see that certain beliefs seem obviously harmful or foolish, you may not easily understand other beliefs connected to their reality. Some beliefs, if you analyze them, you know they are wrong, or very foolish beliefs. But because of some beliefs connected to them, you cannot recognize their foolishness and harmfulness. You can recognize some bad ones, but some branches of beliefs, or things implied by beliefs, you cannot recognize.

He says, for example, perhaps you think you are foolish enough; where does the foolishness lie? You actually believe in the existence of so-called original sin. Any normal person would know that this does not sound like something a smart person should believe -- that people are born with original sin. Many people think, how could anyone actually believe that. But you do not so easily discover that many of your current behaviors are caused by your belief in guilt.

Since you acknowledge original sin, or you believe in original sin, guilt arises. He says you have not easily discovered that many of your behaviors are caused by your belief in guilt itself. On the one hand, you think the matter of original sin is foolish and not worth examining. Even though Jesus used his crucifixion, used his life to speak of this matter, it still seems like a fairy tale, a story with allegorical meaning. You can treat it as an allegory, but if you really treat it as real, as truth or fact, and truly believe you are born with original sin, then for an ordinary person who reaches this point, I cannot even describe it. I do not know whether you are defending your religious faith, or whether you have lost your own judgment. If you still have any judgment at all, you would know such a claim is very naive.

But while you know the naivety of this idea itself, you still have a deep sense of guilt in your heart. The guilt I am talking about is not the guilt of having done something wrong; it is the concept of good and evil in this world, and then toward yourself, including other things, when you do not do well, when your performance is not good enough, you also generate a sense of guilt, including guilt toward the instinctive reactions of your own body.

For example, let me give a typical example. Many people have this issue with sexual desire. Whether male or female, under the stimulation of hormones during puberty, there is this demand of sexual desire, and when this sexual desire arises, many people feel they are sinful, feel they are dirty, feel these uncontrollable impulses are filthy and vile. In this kind of thinking, in this sense of guilt, it is actually influencing them without their realizing it. Think about it: does this belief in original sin seem foolish on the surface, but is it actually influencing them throughout their lives?

Seth's meaning is that some beliefs that seem foolish have other beliefs connected to them that you cannot see, but those beliefs still influence your life. The example I just gave is like this. And this suffering, until today, until now, until this present moment, still troubles countless people; countless people are troubled by this issue.

So regarding your beliefs and how beliefs are connected to one another, we will have much to say. In this book, he is actually talking about this issue much of the time; he helps analyze where your beliefs come from, which beliefs will produce which related beliefs, how beliefs influence one another, and how to change and adjust those outdated beliefs, or those beliefs that restrict you, by analyzing your own beliefs.

He says:

The main reason is that you are not in the habit of examining your beliefs.

Precisely because you are not in the habit. He says you might say that the reason you are overweight is because you feel guilty about something in the past, and you might therefore try to find out what that influential event was, but in such a case, your problem actually stems from your belief in guilt itself.

What does he mean here? Some people -- I am just giving an example; it could be other reasons -- some people feel they are too fat, their figure has lost its shape, their weight has completely exceeded the standard. They say "the reason I am fat is because of guilt about something in the past," attributing the cause of today's weight gain to their guilt about certain things. Then they might try to find out what event influenced their weight gain, what caused them to have such guilt, which then led to retaliatory binge eating, lack of control over their weight, inability to control their desire for food.

But in such a case, your problem actually stems from your belief in guilt itself. It is not a particular event, not that thing; it is your belief in guilt itself -- you believe that sin exists in this world, you believe that you yourself still have a sense of guilt, and this is an essence of yours. This essence leads you to think certain things should not be done, or certain things are inappropriate to do, and then it leads to a loss of control in your self-management, leading to being overweight.

I think that people who are not overweight may not have this trouble. People who have been overweight -- those who are relatively fat, whether boys or girls, more often girls -- will very seriously attribute it to many, many causes; they will find a pile of reasons: "Because of this I am like this, because of that, because of something else, that is why I am like this." But this matter has a great influence on their beliefs.

Some people, because of this, will not go to school, dare not face society, have no self-confidence, and develop a sense of alienation and abandonment from society. He says you do not need to carry such a belief. He says:

I am well aware that an important element of your civilization is built upon the foundation of crime and punishment.

Many people fear that without guilt, there would be no inner discipline, and the world would fall into chaos. This is a very important point. This is a deep belief within us. That is how we believe: if there were no sin and punishment in this world, if there was no guilt in this world, the world would lose order, and the world would fall into great chaos.

So you see, I have a video about "whether there is karmic retribution," or a video called "What Is True Guilt," and so on. The people who left the most comments under those two videos said exactly this: "So according to what you say, according to your view, if there is no karmic retribution, if there is no guilt, then wouldn't society fall into chaos? Wouldn't the world fall into chaos?" This is many people's view, not just one person's view, but many people's view.

So, Seth says that our current civilized society, our human civilization, is built upon a foundation, and it is built upon one core belief, which is sin and punishment. If you do bad things, you will be punished. So some people feel that they are fat, and they think it must be because they did something bad and received punishment, and that is why they have today's result. If that were not the case, then they should be slim and beautiful, so how could they be like this? They must have done something poorly somewhere, must have done something wrong somewhere, and that is why they were punished, and that is why they are like this today. So this is a belief in guilt, and in fact it even originates from original sin itself—they believe they were born guilty.

Then Seth continues, saying that in fact this world is already chaotic enough right now, in the present. He says it is not because you do not have the concept of sin and punishment; on the contrary, it is mainly because of the idea of sin and punishment. Seth is being ironic with us here: many people think that if the world had no guilt, the world would fall into chaos. He says, is your present society not chaotic enough? It is already chaotic enough. Your messy world is not because you have no sin and punishment, but precisely because you have sin and punishment, that today's society has become as chaotic as it is.

He says he will make further statements about this point later in this book. So regarding guilt, this book will have a more detailed explanation, telling you what natural guilt is, what kind of guilt we should maintain, and what kind of guilt we should not maintain.

Then the early ideas your parents gave you formed your learning experience itself. They set the boundaries of safety, within which the homogeneous you could operate. Unconsciously, because the mind connected with your brain is not yet so well developed, your imagination goes along a certain route. Your mind is not mature enough, and you are guided by the direction of your parents' beliefs toward a certain direction, and a circle is drawn for you. You cannot let your imagination run freely; your imagination can only be restricted within a safe area.

This is why in essence there is a big difference between many Western and Eastern educational approaches. We often say why our innovative ability is not strong enough. We are so smart, and we all believe one point, that the wisdom of Eastern people in many respects—whether our IQ, our logical reasoning ability, our intuition—on many issues, in terms of hard indicators, our IQ is higher than that of Westerners. The two smartest groups of people in the world, one is the commonly recognized Jews, and the other is us Asian Easterners. Yet in actual practice, our creativity is not strong enough. We do more improvement and innovation, but we seldom do that kind of unrestrained, pioneering, creative work.

Then where is a main point in this? It lies in the parents' guidance of children's creativity and imagination. If you draw this circle too small, then the child will have little imagination. After he passes this stage, even if you want to develop his imagination again, there is no longer the opportunity. Here, we will also mention this when we have the chance to compare Eastern and Western education in the future. Here I will simply say one sentence: the West, in education, in protecting imagination, at least comparatively speaking, is better than Eastern education.

Although in earlier times, before the development of modern civilization, our imagination was better than theirs. Toward the human inner self, toward nature, our many meditations, much Eastern philosophy, gave this imagination extremely great, unrestricted, completely free rein. On the contrary, the West at that time was very restrictive. But after entering modern civilization, we abandoned this kind of imaginative ability of our ancestors, and we did not accept the West's protection of imagination. We entered a very strange situation—in education, in imagination, we basically adopted a kind of erasing behavior.

So generation after generation of our children basically have no imagination. This is not the children's fault, but the parents', and also the society's. It was already erased in the early stage of the child's growth.

Here I will give a typical case, and you will understand that the erasure of imagination in the middle is completed without anyone noticing. In the United States, there is such a case: a kindergarten teacher taught the students a circle. He drew a circle on the blackboard and said this reads the letter O, this is a letter, this is O. Then the child went home and wanted to show off to his parents that he had learned knowledge today, that he had learned something, and said this circle reads O, and told his parents.

As a result, the parent was someone who placed extreme importance on the child's imagination, and directly filed a lawsuit against the kindergarten. He said: since your teacher told our child that this circle reads O, he will never again treat it as a bubble, or as a sunflower, or as a round apple, or as a frisbee, or as a pie, or as the sun, or as a full moon. He never will again. He will only think that this circle symbolizes O. He said you have erased our child's imagination. He demanded 1 million U.S. dollars from the kindergarten³. Then the case eventually went to court, and the final result was that the kindergarten lost the lawsuit and paid the parent 1 million U.S. dollars⁴, precisely because he taught the child that this circle reads O.

When you tell a child that this circle reads O, in his mind, he no longer thinks it represents other things. His imagination about this circle ends there, it stops. Later, when he sees anything, as soon as he sees this circle, his first reaction in his brain is the letter O. So this is a relatively classic case of erasing imagination. In real life, through such a case, you can imagine it. Look at the children around you, look at your own child, and see how his imagination is being erased bit by bit by current education and by you parents.

After you finish erasing it, when he grows up and graduates from university, you tell him to create new things, to have innovation and imagination, not to think of the letter O as O, but to think of it as something else. But he has already passed that time. In many people's developmental process, in the process of intellectual or imaginative development, once a certain period is missed, it is impossible to make up for it again. This cultivation of imagination, to a certain extent, is also a kind of material thing. In other words, it is related to your brain structure and how the brain thinks, your mode of thinking. Once you have formed this fixed pattern of thinking, if you want him to break through, it is like an invisible wall and an invisible ceiling, it restricts him, and he has no way.

So I will just briefly talk about this problem of imagination. Here, what he is saying is a normal phenomenon: ordinary children generally develop according to a curve drawn by their parents, within an imaginative space that has a certain direction and a certain range. So at this time, parents should give children as much room and range for imagination as possible, on the premise of ensuring safety, but not overdo it. If overdone, it is bad; the child will have no potential for developing imagination, and will also be very timid, and will have no courage or pioneering spirit in the future.

This is very common, especially common. I think if any of you here have children at home, you will have this experience. Look at your child. If you find that when your child plays games, he does not dare to challenge higher difficulty things, or in actual life, and most clearly in games—because from a child's games you can see that when he grows up he will have the same type of problems.

I have typically seen this, I have personally experienced it. Some children, from an early age, when you watch them play games, for example computer games, they only play the round they can win. The next round will definitely be more difficult. For an average child, he will play round by round until his ability limits him. But there is also a kind of child who does not dare to challenge those higher-difficulty games; he is only willing to play the level he can definitely win. This level he can play repeatedly, because he is certain about this round and very confident about this round. As for the unknown next round—maybe he tried it once and lost—he does not want to play it again. He does not want to be like other children, who say "I lost, so I will try again, change my method and see if I can win." He does not. When he encounters difficulty, he retreats to the previous safe and comfortable environment, and repeatedly plays the same level or the same difficulty.

Even in the game settings there are difficulty settings—the simplest, easy; ultimate, difficult; and nightmare-level highest challenge. Some children will challenge relatively high difficulty, while other children will not. They start from the lowest difficulty, from the simplest, and never dare to challenge the highest difficulty. These are actually limitations on themselves. This is a digression, because what he is discussing is the relationship between a person's beliefs and imagination.

He says that generally—not absolutely—generally your imagination follows your beliefs, and the same is true of your emotions. In this there are more or less some general patterns. What are these patterns? It is that your imagination, or your emotions, follow your beliefs. Your beliefs determine the direction of your imagination or your emotions.

A small child cries when hurt; when he is no longer in pain, he stops crying. The emotion that exists behind this crying also automatically transforms into another. The child cries for a while and then is fine immediately; this emotion comes and goes, he cries and that is all; after crying he automatically transforms into another emotion, and may play happily again. So children often still have tears in their eyes, still have teardrops on their faces, and then they begin happily playing the next game, so it comes quickly.

But if the child discovers—what does he discover? That after the event is over, he still keeps crying. He fell down, he cried because of pain; when he does not hurt, he does not cry. This is normal. But he discovers: after he fell and hurt himself, when he no longer hurts, he still cries, cries nonstop. Adults will give him special attention, and even give him some extra benefits—give him some snacks that they normally do not give him, give him some toys and so on. Then he will discover that he can prolong that emotion—when he does not feel pain, he also cries; when he has nothing wrong, he cries; when his desires cannot be satisfied, he cries.

At this time when he cries, does he hurt? No pain. So it is strange. You will find that normally, when do people cry? They cry when in pain. If a small child is mentally sound, he cries only when he is in pain or hungry. When he is not in pain and not hungry, or when he is uncomfortable—for example, he has wet or soiled himself and has not been changed—at that time he will cry. When he is comfortable, he will not cry. But this kind of emotion—when parents overly give him special attention after he cries even when he is no longer in pain—will indulge the child into forming this kind of emotion: crying when not in pain, in order to get more attention.

So we often see many children there doing dry thunder without rain, just wailing. Actually he has no tears at all; he is wailing and straining his neck to shout. Some parents get very angry, and when they encounter this kind of dry wailing child they feel like giving him two slaps. Some parents, although they know the child is just dry wailing, still cannot bear it, and still go to coax the child, which further encourages his next dry-wailing emotion.

Many times parents say, what is the big deal? The child just wants something, he just wants a little attention, wants some good food, and it is not really harmful. He says it is actually not so. He says:

In a child's earliest period, he compares his own interpretation of reality with his parents' ideas.

Actually children are especially good at reading people's expressions and attitudes, especially their parents' attitude toward them. He says, since both parents are bigger and stronger than him, and can satisfy so many of his needs—almost for the child, all his needs can be satisfied by parents—then he will naturally try to make his experience consistent with their expectations and beliefs. "They" refers to the parents.

Although when a child is hurt, he cries or feels sad, and generally speaking this is a fairly natural thing, this is very normal. But this tendency is extended through belief—if it is extended and not controlled, or if this thing of wailing for no reason is indulged by parents—this belief will lead to how far? It will make the child feel long periods of loneliness and desolation, and then this will be adopted as a definite behavior pattern. This belief will lead to such a result.

This is not what parents want to see. Parents do not want their child to feel lonely or desolate, but because of your excessive attention, it will instead cause the child to produce this kind of relationship, and lead to the experience of this belief. So those parents who excessively attend to their children—what will their children ultimately become? They will not form the normal, healthy psychological state the parents hoped for; instead, the child will feel that he is not valued, that he is not loved, that he has not received love, and what he feels is loneliness and desolation. This is completely different from what you think.

So why is it that many children who grow up in doting environments, after going out into society, have no warmth, do not understand how to love others, and do not care about others, and even do not care about their own parents? This is a concept produced by a great deal of social reality. It is not that we do not love our children, but you must understand that this kind of excessive love and excessive attention—in other words, this kind of doting on the child—ultimately leads to such a result. The more you pay attention to him and care about him, when he wails for no reason when there is nothing wrong and no pain, you will cause him to develop—over time, if not controlled—the feeling that he is actually lonely, that he has actually not received love. But parents have already given him more than ordinary parents can give. Others already think these parents love to an extreme degree. But will it be like that? No.

So we can see very typical examples of this. For example, some social incidents. For instance, I remember a few years ago there was a young man who went to study in Japan. After returning home, his mother went to pick him up at the airport—I think it was at Shanghai airport—and he directly stabbed or beat and injured his mother, I forgot. The reason was that his mother would not give him money, or would not let him buy something, or something like that. There are many similar things you can see, where parents' doting on their children ultimately leads to there being no emotional bond between children and parents, none at all. Why? Because he himself feels that he is lonely and desolate; in his heart he actually hates these parents.

He says the belief hidden behind this is:

Any harm is inevitably a disaster.

This is a belief that can originate, for example, from an overly anxious parent. What does "any harm is inevitably a disaster" mean? For example, getting hurt—being hurt is a harm, right? That is very normal; we often get hurt in this material world, in all kinds of ways. Getting hurt is just getting hurt, whether it is physical injury, emotional injury, or career injury—are these all harms?

For example, in this pandemic, many people—I know too many of these things. There are many friends who had just opened a restaurant, operated for three weeks, and then the pandemic arrived, and then it was closed for months until now, and the investment was all lost. Some people invested in a gym, thinking that in the future society people would care about health, and it was the same. As for other industries, examples are everywhere. Is this not career harm? In relationships, career, life, body—all kinds of areas will be harmed. This kind of harm is normal. If you treat it as normal, then when this harm comes, when it hurts you most deeply, you cry when you should cry, feel depressed when you should feel depressed, feel sad when you should feel sad, and once it passes, it passes.

But if, after you fall and hurt, you cry; after the pain ends, you are still crying, and you continue this emotion and this belief, it will lead to the idea that any harm is a disaster. What is a disaster? It means a substantive, irreversible, destructive consequence. That is a disaster. Small hurts and small bumps, ordinary small knocks and scrapes are harmless matters.

If parents worry excessively, when a child falls they treat it as an enormous matter—the child scraped his knee, broke the skin on his head, scraped his hand, oh dear, that worry is simply terrible. They will scold the parents-in-law for not watching the child, or even scold their own in-laws, "Why didn't you watch the child?" If the husband was taking care of the child, they scold the husband too. If they themselves were taking care of the child, they almost want to slap themselves twice—it is simply unforgivable. How could the child be watched like this, how could the child get hurt? This is excessive worry by a parent.

Such worry may lead to the belief that "any harm is a disaster." If such a mother's imagination follows her belief—he just said earlier, imagination follows belief—because this mother has such a belief, her imagination follows this belief, meaning that harm may lead to serious consequences.

What consequences? For example, oh dear, this child actually just fell, but nothing is wrong. Yet she will think—if this child is not careful, next time he falls harder, won't he be hurt more severely? And more seriously, if he accidentally falls into some dangerous place and his head hits a nail, wouldn't he fall to his death? If he just happens to fall carelessly into some place, wouldn't his little life be gone? You tell me about this parent, I don't know how to describe her. For no reason at all, actually it was just an ordinary fall, but in her imagination it becomes a terrible disaster, even an irreparable disaster, simply horrifying. So she deliberately exaggerates the seriousness of the fall.

Because her imagination follows her belief, she is bound to do this. Then she immediately perceives, in the most trivial danger—such as falling, for example a child walking and falling, this most trivial danger—that there is a potentially great danger beside her child. Where does this perception come from? It comes from imagination. She treats this fall as an enormous matter. For example, if he scrapes himself, she says, oh, what if he gets tetanus? If he gets tetanus he could die, so we must hurry... Actually after a fall, applying a little mercurochrome and putting on a band-aid is enough, but she insists on taking the child to get a tetanus shot. This is very normal; many parents are like this, excessively. So in a trivial danger, she turns it into a potential huge risk.

In this situation, through the mother's behavior, and at the same time through telepathy—don't forget, people have telepathy, especially children, it is very strong, especially with the mother—the father is a little better—especially the mother. When the mother's heart is full of fear, the child senses it clearly and plainly. The mother may not need to say a single word, but because the mother is afraid in her heart, the child is even more afraid than the mother. Because he thinks, Mother is like a god-like being to me; all my needs can be satisfied; she is so big, so much bigger than me; every day I have to lift my head and crane my neck to see her. If even she is afraid of something like this, then I must be scared to death. So this mother's telepathic fear is instantly transmitted to the child, and he is not aware of it at all.

He receives a message. As for external actions, those go without saying—when the mother is afraid, there are also some external actions. Reacting according to these unspoken beliefs, Seth makes this matter clear once again.

He explains a very subtle thing. This problem is very common. In Western societies, you see many children fall, and parents basically ignore it; they take a glance, let them fall, get up by themselves and do whatever; they generally do not care much. But Chinese children and Chinese parents care a bit too much about this aspect of children, way too much. It is very normal for small children to get bumps and scrapes. When we were little, we were—I can almost say not every day, but almost every few days—injured and bleeding; our two knees were often painted with gentian violet; this was very normal. There were always red medicine and purple medicine and simple gauze at home, every family had them. Because children played outside every day and got hurt every day; it was very normal.

But today's children are not like this. When they get a little hurt, parents overreact. Here he tells you what serious consequences this overreaction will have. The consequences are very serious, not like what you simply think: "Oh, I take good care of my child, what is wrong with that? What is wrong with that? I don't want my child to fall, is that wrong? You tell me I don't want my child to get hurt, is that wrong?" Oh, he is so self-righteous. If you dare to say anything about him, he is more aggressive than you: "It's not your child, you are just standing there talking without any back pain." Then he will just do it that way, and what can you do about him? Only when one day he understands the consequences will he know.

He says much of this type of information is actually hidden in the conscious mind. These beliefs of yours are hidden in the conscious mind, and you do not know them. But an adult who is not accustomed to examining personal beliefs may simply not know, may simply not know that such thoughts are hidden in his own heart. You completely do not know. The belief itself has not been buried; beliefs have not been hidden away, nor are they unknowable to you. It is not that you do not know them; they just have not been pulled out. What you need to do now is to pull these beliefs out. This book actually asks you to do this.

As mentioned earlier, for example in previous chapters, what is the most harmful belief? Remember this. The most harmful belief is: the belief that the clues to your present behavior have already been buried and usually cannot be found. That is, you usually think that the belief hidden behind your present behavior can no longer be found. You think that the hidden belief behind many of your current actions, the belief that directs your present behavior, can no longer be found. Since it cannot be found, how can you change it? You cannot even find your beliefs. This book is about how to change your beliefs—your beliefs create reality, your ideas create reality. Your beliefs and ideas create reality. Now you want to change your life, so change your beliefs. But you say I cannot find these reasons behind my current strange behavior; if you cannot find them, how can you change them?

He says this belief itself shuts you outside the contents of your own conscious mind, shuts you outside the inner content of your conscious mind. You stop observing your conscious mind, and then it prevents you from searching—searching for the answers that could have been found. It stops you from looking for the answer, saying there is none, don't look, there is none. Since it says this, you then stop looking. Actually the answer is right there. It tells you there is none; this belief tells you not to look, there is none. So this belief is the most harmful one. First remove this belief.

Then they took a break in the middle, and we will skip over the break. Then Seth -- no, Rob began to describe something that was bothering him. What was it? A small example. When Seth appeared, when Seth was transmitting tonight, Rob felt an unusual stiffness in his own hand. This stiffness interfered with the natural formation of the words, so he could not write properly, and it took him a great deal of effort to keep taking notes. Normally when we write, it is natural, and we do not need to make any special effort. But tonight was different. As soon as Seth came through to transmit the material, Rob found that writing with his hand was very difficult. On the one hand, he had to spend mental energy thinking about how to write the words, and on the other hand, he also had to try to concentrate on listening to what Seth was saying.

Because Seth's spoken delivery itself was not that easy to understand. Although it was all in English, he spoke with an especially thick European accent, and it was hard to tell where it came from -- sometimes it sounded Russian, sometimes German, sometimes Austrian -- English spoken with such a heavy accent. And it was a rather masculine voice coming from a female throat, a voice that leaned masculine. If you have heard Seth's actual voice -- the one that is on YouTube -- you will find that his voice is not that easy to understand, and there are often very long pauses in the middle, and you do not know where in the English sentence the pause falls. So it really was quite exhausting. So he had to think about writing on the one hand, and he also had to listen on the other.

This went on until the break, and then Rob told Jane, he said, I would like to use "pendulum divination" after the session -- that is the English term -- I would like to use this method to find the cause of this phenomenon. He said, because I do not want to ask Seth. Why did he not want to ask? Because asking would interrupt the process of the book.

Here he explains briefly what "pendulum divination" means. You can go and play with this; it is really fun. You can try this very ancient method, and if you do not know it, you can search for it online. Simply put, you find an extremely fine thread -- it must be a very fine thread, because a thread that is too heavy or too thick will not work well -- and you hang a small weight from it. Usually you hang a small pendulum, a bob, that is, a conical, pointed weight. If you do not have this kind of weight, you can hang some other heavy object from it. It is best if it is something metal, a metal object about one or two centimeters, two or three centimeters square, because it has a certain sensitivity, although other objects will also work.

Let this weight swing freely, right in front of you. You hold the string and let it swing, let it swing gently. Then, at this point, you ask questions in your mind. You can only ask yes or no questions; you cannot ask other kinds of questions, because this method only has two answers. So you silently ask a question in your mind, for example, "Should I take this job or not," something like that. Then, according to whether the pendulum swings forward and backward or left and right, you get the answer yes or no. As for whether swinging left and right means "yes" or swinging forward and backward means "yes," you can define that for yourself at the beginning -- you tell yourself that swinging left and right means "yes," and swinging forward and backward means "no," and give yourself that kind of suggestion. Then after a while you start experimenting with it. You can use it to obtain a response from the subconscious -- to seek knowledge beyond the subconscious -- and you can often get excellent results.

You can try this; it is quite fun. When we were discussing our respective psychological blocks, Jane and I had a choice. That is, he could obtain the material about why his hand was stiff. He said both channels were open at the same time, and the material was complete. Although I wanted the dictation to continue --

Rob Asked Why the Hand Was Stiff

Back to the scene in class: on the one hand, Rob wanted the dictation to continue, and he also very much wanted to know more about his personal issue; he wanted to keep writing the book and did not want the stiff hand to interrupt the writing process, yet he could not hold back his curiosity, and at this point he even felt a little guilty -- but although he felt guilty, he still wanted to ask what the cause was.

As it turned out, after this material actually unfolded, he was instead quite glad he had asked: this matter itself explained how beliefs affect us. Actually, I was thinking, this matter probably had Seth stirring things up in the middle to some degree as well; he may have taken this opportunity to teach everyone a lesson. You will see as you read on.

Pendulum Divination and What Lies Outside the Belief System

Seth began to speak, saying that the reason lies in your conscious mind; the information is right there in the conscious mind. What is called pendulum divination is a method. What kind of method? It is a method that allows you to see those pieces of information in your consciousness that have not been incorporated into the belief system you recognize.

That is to say, within your beliefs, there are some things that do not conform to your belief system, things you have not incorporated. Although they are there, they have not been accepted by you, nor have they been perceived by you. These things that do not meet the standards of your belief system still exist in your consciousness. Pendulum divination allows you to inquire about these things that have escaped beyond the range of your conscious awareness. That is where its function lies.

Seth said, I want you to understand one point: because the readers do not have that opportunity. What opportunity? The opportunity to hear me speak to them personally. Readers are not like Rob, who, when his hand gets stiff, can quickly ask Seth, what is going on with my stiff hand, what is the reason for my recent restless mood. They do not have someone like Seth around them, someone who can explain the principles behind everything. So he said, among our readers, if you do not have this means of communicating directly with Seth, you can try using such a method to ask your subconscious about those pieces of information that have escaped beyond the belief system.

The beliefs themselves are indeed conscious on your part; you are quite aware of them, but you are not aware of the ideas attached to them.

You actually do have awareness of the beliefs themselves. You certainly know your values, you certainly know your sense of right and wrong, your likes and dislikes. But what you are not aware of is that attached to these core values there are still other beliefs.

Rob's Beliefs: Poor Communication and Guilt Deserving Punishment

Then Seth pointed out the reason for Rob's stiff hand: it was your belief -- that you and your mother communicate poorly.

Rob later added a note in the book, saying that he felt a surge of energy -- a so-called flash of insight -- suddenly seeing a belief that had always been there, one he had not seen or noticed before. Rob's belief was: I cannot communicate with my own mother; it is very difficult to communicate with her. Many of our listeners probably have a similar problem: with their own parents, on certain issues, communication is sometimes very difficult.

Seth went on to say that intertwined with this belief was another belief: lack of communication is wrong, and any mistake should be punished. Poor communication is a bad thing; not communicating well with one's own parents is a bad thing -- this was the first subsidiary belief branching out from it. At the same time, because poor communication is a bad thing, one should be punished -- doing bad things should be punished. At the beginning of Chapter Four, Seth discussed the core belief of crime and punishment in human society, which is a foundation of our human civilization: we believe that without the rules of crime and punishment, the world would fall into chaos, so there must be crime and punishment, violence must be met with violence, and powerful legal systems, political institutions, and state structures are all prepared for crime and punishment. Deep in every person's heart lies this profound belief in crime and punishment. Poor communication is not a good thing, and what is not a good thing should be punished.

As Rob was writing down this material word by word, he was helping many people communicate; yet at the same time, he felt unable to communicate with his own parents -- how conflicted that was. Through his transcripts, Rob enabled Seth to communicate ideas with thousands upon thousands of readers; yet this man, who could communicate with a being not of this world, found it very difficult to communicate with his own parents.

You wanted to use these sessions to express the ideas you believed in so deeply, yet when you could not describe those same ideas to your parents, you felt so strongly that you were guilty.

With these beliefs mixed together, you were in great pain: I help others communicate with a being who does not even have a physical body, so why can I not communicate with my own parents, who do have physical bodies?

Seth said that these conflicting beliefs caused difficulties in the method of communication. You communicate with your parents through spoken language, while you communicate through Seth by means of handwriting; the two became mixed together, very subtly. In other words, Rob was very good at communicating through writing, but not good at communicating through the mouth, through spoken language.

So the movements of your hand were not as natural and smooth as they should have been.

At the same time, Rob also believed that communicating through writing was much better than communicating through speaking, so he often wrote notes to Ruburt. This couple was quite interesting: the apartment was not big -- one bedroom, one living room, one kitchen, one bathroom, plus a room they later rented across the hallway -- and for years they lived in this small place. Yet in such a tiny home, where the two of them could not avoid seeing each other all day long, they still often wrote notes to each other -- so romantic. It was like when you were in school and liked a boy or a girl but felt too shy to say so, so you wrote a note and slipped it into their desk drawer. That method no longer exists now: people just send a WeChat message, or drop a hint on Facebook or Instagram. It was not like that before; back then you really had to write notes.

Seth said, you often use a light and graceful hand to write out the things you now find hard to say aloud -- is this not your belief at work? Rob believed that writing was better than speaking, so the couple often wrote each other lovely little notes -- was that not romantic.

Rob said, you are right, you have spoken what was in my heart.

Seth continued: therefore, tonight, when you touched others by transcribing my words, you felt ashamed -- ashamed of what? You believed you could not touch your mother through spoken words. By recording my words, you could touch thousands upon thousands of readers and influence countless people; even now, those listening to this book or reading it are still being influenced by him. Yet such a remarkable man could not persuade his own mother, could not touch his own mother. So the method of communication changed; the method became entangled with the belief.

I am telling you this so that you may take a look, to see how beliefs operate.

Seth laughed as he said this. Actually, I suspect that behind this incident he had a hand in stirring things up: if he had not stirred things up, it would not have reacted so quickly and so obviously, and it happened to occur in this very session, serving as evidence for what he had said earlier. Seth laughed with satisfaction.

The Painter's Hand

Seth then said humorously: You also still believe that—when you are talking with me, if you need to, you can draw a line under every belief. Your main way of communicating is painting. Why draw a line under every belief? Because Rob is a painter. For a painter to stop painting every night and write instead is itself a kind of inner conflict for him—he feels this hand should be for painting, not for writing, and what he writes is not just a little; all these Seth books were written this way.

So Seth teased him: You can draw a line under every belief I mention, because you are a painter, and you would rather draw lines than write.

On the other hand, were it not for the fact that there are indeed two subordinate beliefs connected with last weekend that are in conflict with each other, this belief would not have been particularly drawn into it. The first is: You should have communicated with your mother in words, as you did then, in Rochester; the second is: When you stayed home, you should have touched the multitudes out there through your painting. But after coming home, you have been communicating with the world through your notes, rather than touching the multitudes through painting.

Every painter speaks through his own work. But Rob found that now he was not moving and touching people through his paintings, but influencing and enlightening all beings day after day through taking notes. This was utterly at odds with his most original, most initial intention of being a painter. A painter had turned into a clerk, a stenographer—and what he recorded was not even his own words, but someone else's words that he wrote down. This gave him a sense of worthlessness: the hand of a painter is not the hand of a stenographer, not the hand of a secretary.

Seth said, this was a conscious choice—you consciously did this recording, you decided to do it, and you were very clear that recording the Seth material is a very meaningful thing. But you were unaware of the other contents of the conscious mind—those earlier contents Seth had just pointed out, and those conflicting beliefs. Do you understand what I am saying?

Rob said, I understand, of course I understand. He knew in his own heart that he was aware of all the inner conflicts and all the difficulties in his mind. This statement applies to everyone as well: when it is said about someone else, the empathy may not be so obvious, but when it is said about yourself, it becomes clear.

Once I have pointed these things out, these beliefs become obvious, and their relativity gives the body consciousness confused messages.

The beliefs conflict with each other and stand in opposition: on the one hand, the conscious mind says, this thing should be written, and writing is more valuable than speaking; on the other hand, it says, I cannot even communicate with my own mother, and now I am writing every night to enlighten all beings—I cannot even enlighten my mother, so who am I going to enlighten? I should be moving people through my work, through my paintings every day, so how has it become writing several pages of notes every night to influence people? So should I write or not write? Both writing and not writing are full of conflict.

The idea of punishment also came in.

You finally did follow your decision to have this session, but then you punished yourself through your own personal interpretation.

What does it mean to punish oneself through personal interpretation? The following are all Rob's own personal interpretations: he believed that his mother's condition was related to a lack of communication; his brother told Rob that she still occasionally stuttered when she spoke. So Rob came up with an appropriately self-punishing interpretation—making his own hand movements clumsy: my mother cannot even speak smoothly, how can I, as her son, be so unfilial as not to communicate with her properly?

Seth tried to explain the connection in simple terms:

Because you believe your means of expression is mainly through painting, and you believe your mother's means of expression is mainly through speech, you have muddled the movements of your hand, rather than, say, muddling your speech.

Can you understand what I am saying on a conscious level? I think everyone here should be able to understand: because you felt your mother stuttered, you made your hand clumsy—you are a painter, and your expression is mainly through your hand; you felt speech was not so important, so you did not make yourself stutter, but instead made your hand not work well.

Rob said, I can understand. As he wrote, he thought: this guy really says it well.

Now, you made those conscious choices at different times—when you made the choices you did not notice them, but they existed in the manner of conscious awareness and decision. These beliefs are all selectable: once you see them, you can change them or accept them. Once you see clearly and understand, you can change them; change them, and the symptoms in your body will also disappear.

Seth asked: Do you have any more questions? Rob said no, I just want some time to think it over carefully.

Ruburt Is Also Clearing Out His Beliefs

Seth shifted gears and began talking about Ruburt:

Ruburt has lately been trying to recognize some beliefs he wants to discard, and he has been loosening them up so that they are swishing and swirling about in his consciousness.

Ruburt was gradually becoming aware of these beliefs. They were no longer as invisible as before, and many of them he was facing for the first time. What makes this chapter different from Seth Speaks is that this couple was recording and learning at the same time, and they applied what they learned as they went. Ruburt was also trying to find ways to cast off some unwanted beliefs, and at that point those beliefs were swishing and swirling about, becoming visible.

You should both have some idea of those beneficial beliefs and their importance in your lives. This kind of awareness should not only be comparable in degree between the two of you, but it should also be an intuition that can stay alert in the consciousness at any time.

Seth said that what he had just said should be included in this book. Although this was an explanation Rob had asked Seth for concerning his personal questions, Seth said it was part of the content of this book. At this point you can understand why my earlier suspicion made sense: why did Seth want to bring this matter up? Because Seth wanted to use this phenomenon to talk about this very thing. This is content that belongs in this book, not a private session for Rob alone.

Seth went on: tonight Ruburt felt exhausted on the one hand. He compared the beliefs he and Rob shared with those of Rob's brother's family. A few days earlier, hadn't he gone to New York and stayed a day or two at his mother's and brother's place? After comparing with his brother's family, Ruburt saw the harmful aspects of his own physical beliefs through his own bodily beliefs (Jane said this while touching her knee). These beliefs were the ones to be discarded. During those days staying at his brother's, he discovered that many of his beliefs and ideas in daily life, on the material level, were not good and not right: he had smoked for a long time, did not like to exercise, was not good at arranging his own life and work, felt that not a single minute of the day could be wasted, was tense and busy every day, and neither knew how to enjoy life nor how to live at ease. In his life in the three-dimensional world, he felt that many of his beliefs, including his beliefs about money and about many things in life, were not right and should be changed. Ruburt was an honest person, and when he found something wrong, he changed it.

But on the other hand, he also compared his own personal psyche and creative abilities with those of Rob's brother's family. Who could possibly compare with him in that regard? Every day he was here with Seth writing material, holding ESP classes, writing books, getting published. In terms of creativity and growth of the psyche, Rob's brother simply could not compare with him at all. So he also felt extremely exhilarated. These two things combined produced his state tonight: both tired and exhilarated.

Seth said, this morning I deliberately let him sense that I was working on this book, and some ideas about this book entered into his consciousness. In the last session of Chapter Three, Jane had also said something similar: although I am doing my own things, I feel that Seth is still writing the book, he has not been idle. Seth said, I deliberately let him sense it, so that some ideas entered into his consciousness. Why do this deliberately? Because Ruburt did not believe that this kind of "leakage" should happen: he felt that Seth's world and his world were connected only during channeling. Ordinarily he did not believe there would be any leakage. Because he did not believe it, this kind of leakage did not often appear in his experience, and so he could not recognize it. But in fact it had always been there.

Seth said, occasionally I will give the two of you some incidental material, so that you can apply it in practical life as a certain chapter develops. What I just said is all incidental material of this kind. But the important thing is that you understand: what you are dealing with are the beliefs in your minds.

The Real Work Is Done Within the Mind

The real work is done within the mind, not by seeking immediate results in physical reality. Many people who study the Seth material face the most common challenge from those around them: "If beliefs create reality, then create something for me to see. Right here, right now, conjure something up in front of me." What Seth is saying here is this: deal with it on the psychological level, on the level of your inner beliefs, not on the level of external events. If your hand is stiff and you cannot write, do not just go see a doctor; resolve it from within. But the process of resolution also cannot rest on the hope that once you discover the belief today, the world will change tomorrow. Did a bad state of life come about in a single day? Was it not formed bit by bit through negative emotions and negative beliefs? Then for good beliefs to manifest, they also need time; they cannot be accomplished in an instant. That is why it is called creation. Creation is a process.

Things will unquestionably develop according to the work you put into your beliefs.

The outer world is a projection of your inner self. There must not be the slightest doubt about this idea. You must believe: bad results come from bad beliefs ("bad" is in quotation marks, relative), and after you change your beliefs, good results will surely follow. The real work is done within the mind. As long as you put in the work, you can wait for the results with peace of mind; but you must not keep checking whether the results have arrived yet.

Let me give a vivid example: you firmly believe that if you plant a good seed, a good flower will grow from it. You must believe in this itself, but you must give it time, waiting for the seed to sprout, bloom, and bear fruit. You cannot bury the seed and then keep digging up the soil to see whether it has sprouted; then dig it up again the next day to check. If you dig it up a couple of times like that, the seed really will not sprout anymore; it will be killed. To put it bluntly, just tend the work and do not ask about the harvest. When a farmer plants seeds in the ground, he believes from the bottom of his heart: water it a few times, and in due time the sprouts will come up on their own, the wheat will ripen on its own, the rice will head on its own. His trust in the land far exceeds your belief in and acceptance of your own inner world. What we need is exactly the farmer's trust in the land. You do not need to dig up the field every day to see how much it has grown. It will not give you a progress bar, one percent, two percent; there is no such thing. Just tend the work. Water when it needs watering, fertilize when it needs fertilizing, and hold a firm belief in the matter itself in your heart. That is enough.

Rob said no. He thought this passage was written brilliantly.

Emotions and Imagination Follow Beliefs

Seth said that Jane, as Seth, did something unusual -- turned to look at the clock and said: Now we will take a short break, and afterward I will add some material for the book, then go deeper into this chapter, but I will not keep you long. After a short rest, he continued.

Your beliefs have changed somewhat. As an adult, you have done many things that as a child you believed you could not do. For example, perhaps at the age of three you believed that crossing the street was a dangerous thing; by the age of thirty, with any luck, you should have gotten rid of that belief. Even in childhood, this belief was quite appropriate and necessary.

"With any luck" is Seth joking -- why would you need to wait until thirty, ten is enough. A three-year-old crossing the street alone feels he will be hit by a car and killed; but if at thirty you still need someone to hold your hand to cross the street, then what are you? But at that time, this belief was absolutely useful -- if at three you went darting across the street, you probably would not have survived to now.

If your mother transmitted to you, through telepathy as well as words, a terrifying picture of the potential danger of the street, it reinforced that belief. Then you would carry that emotional fear within you, and even imagine possible accidents.

Your mother worried about you having an accident crossing the street, and transmitted this kind of horrifying picture to you through telepathy, and you would also be infected with this emotion, and would even imagine accidents -- because you were afraid. This passage is too plain, there is nothing to explain.

Your emotions and your imagination, both of these follow your beliefs. When a certain belief disappears, you will no longer hold that same emotion, and your imagination will also turn in other directions.

So when we work inwardly, we are working on our beliefs. Do not try to adjust your emotions, do not try to change your imagination -- when beliefs change, imagination naturally changes. If you believe the future is beautiful, what your imagination conjures up will be beautiful; if you believe the future is bleak, what your imagination brings you is darkness, and your emotions will be low. At that point, if you try to convince yourself to have a good mood, to have positive imaginings, how is that possible? The simplest way to change the future is to adjust your beliefs, to adjust your entire belief system.

There are very few purely rational beliefs. When you examine the contents of the conscious mind, you must be sure to know and recognize the various connotations of emotion and imagination that are connected with any given idea.

When you try to find beliefs, you will often find that you cannot locate that kind of purely rational belief. No one has sorted out your beliefs as clearly as Seth has sorted them out, telling you one by one that you have this belief, that belief, and what the connections between beliefs are. What you see is the beautiful exterior of a building, or a sorrowful emotion, or a picture of a bad future. What he means is, you need to recognize the idea, the belief behind those emotions and imaginings, and find their connotations -- if you cannot find them, how can you change them?

To change a belief, you can replace it with an opposite belief, and there are many different methods for this. One particular method, a three-pronged approach:

First, regarding the belief you want to change, generate an emotion opposite to the emotion caused by that belief. If this belief brings you sorrow, replace it with a joyful emotion. If it brings you fear, generate an emotion of absolute security to replace it.

Second, turn your imagination in the direction opposite to the imagination controlled by that belief. If this belief causes your imagination about the future to go in a certain direction, then imagine a direction completely opposite to it, and make it vivid and lifelike.

Third, meaningfully assure yourself: this unsatisfactory belief is only an idea you have about reality, not an aspect of reality itself. It is not reality, it is only a thought, a notion, an idea. It is neither a part of you nor a fact, it is nothing special, and you can replace it at any time.

You must understand that this idea is not static. Emotion and imagination steer its direction, and either reinforce or negate them.

Your ideas are always changing. When you find it difficult to replace an idea in a purely rational way, you can call on these two good helpers, emotion and imagination: they can either reinforce your beliefs or negate your beliefs. Why is this chapter called "The Relationship Between Imagination and Beliefs"? What relationship? They can both reinforce and negate -- it all depends on how you use them.

Playing With the Conscious Mind in a Spirit of Play

How do you use it? Seth says:

You should play with your conscious mind in a spirit of play, deliberately.

Like a child playing a game, don't frown too hard. Don't think that the moment you discover a terrible belief of yours, the sky is falling, and you get so depressed you can't function, blaming heaven and earth, blaming your parents and your family of origin. Don't be like that. These are just some of your thoughts and ideas. Pick them out and take a look. Take your conscious mind out and "put it on display" -- just like posting on your social media feed: today you show off your house, tomorrow your furniture, the day after your kids, and the day after that your newly bought car; women show off diamond rings, clothes, freshly done makeup. You can also show off your conscious mind and your belief system. If later on we find that what people post on their feeds isn't these material things, but rather each person showing off their own belief system and thought system, wouldn't that be fun too? If you have that kind of courage, daring to let the whole world see the process of dissecting yourself inwardly, then you're truly remarkable, truly beginning a great awakening. As for why it's a great awakening, figure it out yourself. If you don't have that inner strength, that's fine too -- just show it to yourself first. Create a feed that only you can see, post to it every day, and flip through it yourself when you have nothing else to do.

Why do this with the mindset of playing a game? The core point is to make you forget the existence of reality.

In it, for a while you completely ignore so-called reality, and pretend that what you truly desire is real.

When you're playing a game, do you think about that painful bill in your life that you haven't paid yet? Do you think about how the rent is due soon? In the moment of playing the game, you're completely immersed, ignoring the existence of reality. Otherwise, real life keeps hitting you with merciless blows, and you simply can't build a good inner world.

So you have to learn to pretend, to use pretense and imagination to build your future world. Seth gives several examples in a row:

If you are poor, then deliberately pretend that you have all the money you need financially, and imagine how you would use your money.

Suppose you now have 20 billion. How would you spend it? How much to your mom, how much to your dad, how much to your wife or husband, how much to your in-laws on both sides; what model of private jet to buy, which company's yacht, how much it costs -- go ahead and pick. You can look it up online first. You've got 20 billion, so shouldn't you take your time choosing? You care about the world, you care about the universe, you want to set up a research fund to study the mysteries of the cosmos, to study how to overcome cancer -- anything works. Think about how you would use your money.

If you are ill, then playfully imagine yourself free of illness and light as air, seeing yourself doing what you want to do.

What do you most want to do when you're healthy? Go skiing, go diving, go mountain climbing. When you're sick you can't go, so right now imagine that you're doing these things.

If you are not good at communicating with people, then right now imagine yourself easily becoming the center of attention in a crowd, always in the C position.

As long as you're in a crowd, you're in the C position.

If you feel your days are gray and meaningless, then imagine yourself living a life that is both full and joyful.

Keep pretending, keep imagining, and it will come true.

Seth knows you'll think this sounds very impractical, so he adds:

This may sound very impractical. Yet in your daily life, you constantly use your imagination and emotions in the service of far less worthy beliefs, and the results are quite apparent. I will add, unfortunately, very "practical" indeed.

You think about bad things every day and believe that's what's practical -- well, go ahead and think about them, and those bad things will be realized in your life one by one, which is why they're "practical indeed." Seth's ability to be sarcastic is also quite something. He rarely curses people (he cursed Jane once in the early sessions), but he often mocks and ridicules people. Here he's ridiculing those who scoff at beautiful imaginings.

Unsatisfactory beliefs take a period of time to concretely manifest in your life, so you may also have to wait a while before you can see actual results. Bad things take time to manifest, and good things are the same. But the new ideas will inevitably grow up together with those old beliefs, thereby changing your experience.

At the same time, this process of imagination will also bring your other incidental ideas face to face with you -- in the process of playing, you'll suddenly have a flash of realization: why do I hold another belief in my life that is the opposite of this one? How can I hold such a negative belief? Aren't I just making things difficult for myself? And then you'll startle, and a shiver runs through you: do I normally live my life holding beliefs like these? Why don't I accept these beautiful beliefs, and instead insist on choosing such pessimistic and negative beliefs?

You may see in which areas you hold two completely conflicting beliefs at the same time, and hold them with equal strength. This is putting yourself in check -- like Zhou Botong's left-right mutual combat in The Return of the Condor Heroes, left hand hitting right hand, right hand hitting left hand. All your time and energy is consumed in this tug-of-war, fighting yourself -- how could you not be in pain? You just haven't noticed it.

For example, you may believe you have the right to health -- feeling that you're naturally born to have a healthy body; yet with the same intensity you also believe: our natural environment is too harsh, the air, land, and water are all polluted, the grain, meat, and vegetables we eat are all full of pesticide residue and antibiotics. These two opposing beliefs exist at the same time -- do you want health or not? This is putting yourself in check.

Many people both want success and don't want success: among women, success is seen as becoming a strong career woman with no femininity -- I don't want to become Dong Mingzhu, I want to be beautiful and enjoy life, go shopping with my girlfriends and have afternoon tea. But when you're at the mall and you see that Hermes bag costs six hundred thousand and you can't afford it, at that moment you sigh: if only I were Dong Mingzhu, I could just swipe my card and buy it. Do you want to become Dong Mingzhu or not? Can you give a straight answer? You can't say you both want to and don't want to -- then how is your body supposed to act? How is the world supposed to cooperate with you? You're caught in your own entanglement, wanting it one moment and not wanting it the next.

It's the same in romantic life: you see all the flaws in someone, yet you're thinking about marrying him; you want to marry him, yet you're unwilling at heart -- always thinking you could still find a richer, more handsome boyfriend. On the one hand you say that with him it's about feelings, that you're not an ungrateful person, that you're not the kind of materialistic woman who's dazzled by money; yet in your heart you're still unwilling. People get tangled up right here.

Seth says, later in this book, I will point out how your beliefs often fall into an interconnected system of ideas.

Rob sincerely exclaimed: very good, Seth, you explained that section really well. Seth also said happily and cheerfully: I'm glad you approve.

That's all for this session's content, everyone.

Session 620

Toward evening, Jane received a phone call from an editor at Time magazine⁵. He hoped to talk with Jane this Friday and Saturday, because he was going to write a cover story about Richard Bach -- Richard Bach was a possible Time cover subject, and his book had become a global hot topic. In Chapter 3, Session 618, we can see the introduction of Richard Bach's participation in the Seth sessions.

At this point Seth said very humorously: "I hope you also have time for me." The "time" here is a pun, referring to Time magazine -- very funny. Rob said: "I know what you mean, no problem."

Look at his content:

Your beliefs generate your emotions.

Yet nowadays it is somewhat popular to place emotional feelings above conscious thought -- many popular claims place emotional feelings above conscious thought, holding that emotions are more basic and more natural than conscious reasoning. Current science, mainstream psychology, still thinks this way -- it holds that a person's emotions are more important than their thoughts. Many psychologists believe that emotions seem to be driven forward by some unknown, unconscious state, as if emotions were something uncontrollable; they guide human consciousness, they influence human consciousness. These are some of our current mainstream views.

He says that the two are actually inseparable -- the two simply cannot be separated, like Jiao and Meng, Meng and Jiao. But your conscious thoughts largely determine your emotional feelings. It is thought that largely determines emotional feelings, not the other way around. This point must be remembered: our mainstream psychologists are wrong on this, they have taken a wrong direction.

Your beliefs generate the appropriate emotional feelings that they imply.

Long-term emotional depression does not come upon you for no reason, does not ambush you. Your emotions do not betray you. Emotions do not suddenly, for no reason, produce a particularly pessimistic, particularly depressed feeling. On the contrary, it is because for a period of time your consciousness has been holding negative beliefs. Because you have negative beliefs, you therefore have this kind of depressed emotion. Your emotions will not betray you; they always follow your beliefs. And this kind of belief -- meaning negative belief -- will cause you to generate strong feelings of depression and dejection, and this emotion comes out.

If, as current mainstream science holds, emotional feelings were more trustworthy than your conscious thoughts, then why would you need "awareness" at all? Why would we need this awareness? You would not need clear thinking at all. If emotions were so important, if emotions led thought around by the nose, then what would we need thought for? Just hand everything over to emotions. So what he is saying here is ironic -- no, it is your thoughts, your beliefs, that lead your emotions, not the reverse.

Furthermore, you are not at the mercy of your emotional feelings.

You will not be at the mercy of your emotions, because they are supposed to follow your reasoning process, your train of thought. The original purpose of your mind is precisely to perceive the physical environment clearly -- its function is just this, to perceive the physical world clearly. Then, after it has finished perceiving the environment, it makes its own judgment about that environment, and this judgment sets your body's mechanisms in motion, bringing about the appropriate response. If you hold beliefs of fear about survival, that will trigger the emotional response of tension and stress. In such a case, you need to examine your own value judgments. Your imagination will of course stir up your emotions, but it too faithfully follows your beliefs.

How you think is how you will feel, not the reverse -- first there are your thoughts, and only then do the imagination and feelings that follow come. So your feelings, your emotions, all follow your thoughts. This part was already mentioned in the previous session, and here he is emphasizing it again. He keeps emphasizing it, because this is the opposite of what many of us believe -- many of us do not quite understand this point, so he stresses it repeatedly here.

He says that later we will discuss the subject of hypnosis, in the later chapters, the final chapters.

Here, let me mention first that, as far as hypnosis is concerned, you are constantly hypnotizing yourselves with your own conscious thoughts and suggestions.

What he means by this passage is that hypnosis will be discussed later; for now he is simply telling you: every one of us in life is actually being hypnotized by ourselves, using conscious thoughts to suggest and self-hypnotize. Because it is done so normally, so naturally, you do not notice it.

The term hypnosis is simply a fairly normal state, in which you concentrate your attention and narrow your focus to a particular range of thoughts and beliefs.

When you concentrate your attention on certain thoughts and beliefs narrowed to a certain range, you are hypnotizing yourself. You spend a great deal of effort focusing on a single thought. We often reduce many of our own ideas to a single point -- whether pessimism about the future, or excitement and joy about the future, it all comes to one point, usually reaching a state of total absorption, thinking of nothing else, only this one thing. For example, if you are going on a trip, or you recently want to buy a house, right now your mind is only thinking about buying this house, and nothing else interests you at all. When you reach this state of total absorption, this is a fairly conscious act, and you are hypnotizing yourself.

Hypnosis itself also demonstrates the importance of belief -- because under hypnosis, you "force-feed" yourself a belief, or someone else -- your hypnotist -- gives you a belief, and you focus all your attention on that thought. That is what hypnosis is.

Mentioning hypnosis here, Seth actually does not think highly of this kind of passive hypnosis. He says if you are willing to do it, it does not matter, but it will not be of much help to you either, because you are entirely hypnotized under the guidance of an unconscious hypnotist. What Seth advocates more is self-suggestion and self-hypnosis. He hopes that you will hypnotize yourself in a waking state -- he believes this method is effective for you, that it can truly change the environment around you and solve the problems around you. This will be covered in dedicated passages later, so I will not expand on it today; he is only emphasizing it here. So as for ordinary hypnosis, he feels that if you want to do it, do it; if not, it does not matter. He thinks it is of no use. On the subject of hypnosis, what I rather like and recommend is Stephen Gilligan's hypnosis; his teacher Erickson was extremely formidable. We will expand on this when we get to hypnosis later.

Thus, just as in your daily life, your emotions and behavior follow your beliefs.

In your daily life, your emotions and behavior follow your beliefs. If you firmly believe you are ill, if you believe you are ill, then in fact you really do become ill; if you believe you are healthy, then you are healthy. There are many articles discussing the essence of healing, what healing really is, and this book will also discuss it. But there is also the reversal of healing -- in such cases, a person loses faith in their health and instead accepts the belief that they are ill. Healing can also go the other way: originally there was nothing wrong, but suddenly one loses faith in one's health, believes one is ill, and then one really does become ill.

Here, the belief itself generates negative emotions.

In such cases of reversed healing, these negative emotions do indeed bring about an illness of body and mind.

Then imagination follows right along. Your imagination follows up, producing terrifying mental images of a particular situation -- for example, how far this illness of mine will develop in the future, for example, the cancer cells will spread, and then my tumor will grow, and then what will happen to me. If he is also staying in a hospital ward, seeing the other patients in the ward, and also gathering information from the internet, seeing that information -- what kind of scenes this illness will lead to as it develops -- at this point his imagination starts coming in, and he begins to imagine what he himself will be like in the future. These terrifying mental images come.

Before too long, once your imagination follows up, your body's data confirms the negative belief.

What does that mean? Those things actually come into being -- the spread of cancer cells you imagined, the growth of the tumor you imagined, it really becomes reality. In that body, the doctor will tell you, look, your CT scan here, here, here -- it becomes real, it confirms what you believed.

I call such beliefs negative because they are far more harmful than an idea of bodily health.

They are far more harmful than the idea of bodily health, so we call them negative.

I mention this here only because, in the overall development of an individual, an illness may very well be used.

He wants to point out: that is, in a person's overall development, in their life plan, it is quite possible that they may use an illness as a way to achieve another constructive purpose. In such a case, in this special kind of case, belief is still involved -- such a person must believe that only by becoming ill can they best achieve another purpose. Such examples do exist; to achieve a special purpose, they must accomplish it through illness.

Because various personal beliefs have already been formed in their experience.

Other methods seem unworkable to them -- because various personal beliefs have already been formed in their experience, only illness can achieve this purpose, no other method will work, only illness. So they have created a vacuum zone -- what zone? That is, they cannot see any other method to achieve the same purpose; they only see that it can be achieved through illness. This kind of possibility does exist in real cases.

Later in this book I will discuss this question more thoroughly, so for now I will stop here.

Of course, one belief can attach itself to many other beliefs, and each one gives rise to its own emotional and imaginary reality.

One belief will attach itself to other beliefs, and each small belief attached in this way can give rise to its own emotions and its own imaginary reality.

For example, the belief in illness itself is dependent upon the belief that man is worthless, guilty, or imperfect.

The belief in illness itself may be attached to these several beliefs.

Your mind not only holds active, positive beliefs, it also contains other negative, inactive beliefs. They lie latent there, ready to be noticed and summoned by you. Any one of them can be brought before you through your conscious act of thought.

You must be careful: within your mind, there are both positive, constructive beliefs and also these negative beliefs. They are always lying latent there, just waiting to be seen by you, noticed by you, summoned by you.

For example, suppose you consistently focus on negative beliefs of poverty, illness, or lack; your conscious mind also still holds the concepts of health, vitality, and abundance.

Even if you focus on such negative beliefs -- states of poverty, illness, lack -- your conscious mind at the same time still holds health, vitality, and abundance. It has all of them.

If you turn your thoughts from negative ideas to positive ones, then your focus begins to change the present situation.

It is very simple: you actually have both in your conscious mind. When you turn from one side to the other, from negative ideas to positive ideas, your present situation begins to change.

Under the leadership of the conscious mind, the potential of the vast energy reservoir deep within you will be aroused and set into action.

The conscious mind can lead the outer, and it can also lead the inner; it will arouse the vast energy potential within.

Because you as creatures are endowed with the instinct for reasoning, and have such varied experience available for your use.

Human beings have developed the ability to reason -- we have the ability to reason, the ability of logical reasoning -- and this ability actually grows the more it is used. The more you exercise your consciousness, the more it expands. The more you practice these abilities, the more conscious you become; the more you use them, the stronger they get.

A flower cannot write a poem for itself, but you can.

A flower cannot write a poem for itself, but you can write a poem for yourself. And in doing so, your consciousness turns back upon itself -- consciousness sees itself, and it really becomes larger than before, consciousness becomes larger than before. Why? Because it can turn back and begin to describe itself. Living in such a colorful, rich environment of possibilities, the human psyche needs and must develop a conscious mind. Your consciousness becomes larger, that is, it becomes the conscious mind, and then you can look back at yourself, use the conscious mind to observe yourself, and even write a poem for yourself -- he uses a literary description to tell you this.

In order to make fairly concise and clear judgments at any time.

In order to make judgments and assessments for yourself at any time. So when the conscious mind grows, the range of the imagination expands accordingly. When you are doing this, constantly judging and assessing yourself, your conscious mind is growing, and the range of your imagination also expands.

In many ways, the conscious mind can be said to be a tool of the imagination.

The more knowledge the conscious mind possesses -- that is, the more your consciousness grasps inner and outer knowledge -- the larger and farther the range your imagination can reach. And the larger and farther the range your imagination reaches, in return, the imagination also enriches the conscious reasoning ability and emotional experience.

What he means by this passage is that you must learn to use your consciousness, learn to use your reasoning ability, learn to use your imagination. These things become better and stronger the more you use them. Just like your body -- we often go to the gym to work out, to run, to exercise, training our muscles, training our bodies. In fact, your consciousness is like your muscles; it needs exercise. The more you use it, the stronger and more powerful it becomes; your conscious abilities will become stronger and stronger. Your imagination also becomes stronger and stronger. All of this requires exercise and use -- try to use it.

You have not yet learned to use the conscious mind correctly and fully, so that imagination, emotion, and reasoning ability seem to be separate faculties, divided from one another, or even enemies of one another.

We do not quite know how to use our conscious mind; we have not yet used it correctly. Because when we do not know how to use it, we feel that our imagination, emotion, and reasoning seem to be separate, or even opposed -- because reasoning is a logical, rational ability, imagination is something emotional, and emotion is even more emotional, and these themselves seem to conflict with reasoning ability. But you should know that when you imagine, you actually need to use your reasoning ability -- if your reasoning ability is not strong enough, your imagination will not be strong enough either. These are in themselves one whole. But we often regard them as conflicting with one another, or as enemies opposed to one another.

Again, the mature conscious mind receives data from the outer world and from the inner world as well.

He has said this several times now.

Only when you believe that consciousness must adjust only to outer conditions can you force it to cut itself off from inner knowledge, the voice of intuition, and the depths from which it springs.

Only when you make it focus only on the outer will it cut itself off. Otherwise, it will not cut itself off; it will always remain connected with the inner. It is because you believe that consciousness must only face outer conditions, it is when you demand that it adjust only to outer conditions, that you force your conscious mind to cut itself off from your inner knowledge, intuition, and all the source from which it comes.

This session is very short, just one session. Let us finish the next session together as well.

Session 621

Last week Seth spoke through Jane five times -- five times in one week, and you can imagine how intense that was. Monday and Wednesday were the regular sessions, and he also gave us some personal material. Tuesday evening was the ESP class, where he again said a great deal. Friday afternoon he addressed the editors of Time magazine -- the content was about Freudian psychology⁶. Then Saturday evening, speaking informally to a group of our friends, he talked about his time in the fourth century as an insignificant pope⁷ -- this was discussed in Chapter 22 of Seth Speaks -- that he had once existed as an insignificant pope, in the fourth century AD, roughly between 325 and 375⁸, around those two points in time.

At that time, he talked with friends a bit about the general conditions of life in Italy, some scenes of life in Rome. I won't go into that evening here. After the guests left, he made a few notes: while everyone was discussing today's world population problem, Seth came through and told us that in the fourth century, as far as he knew, killing infants was a very common practice⁹ -- before an infant was baptized, in the fourth century, it was considered the property of its parents¹⁰, and parents could dispose of it as they wished without incurring any criticism. Why? Because extra children, given the economic conditions of the time -- in the 300s AD, under those circumstances -- housing and food supply both seemed to be "extreme burdens." In that era there were no contraceptive measures, so if you became pregnant you had to give birth. Moreover, under Christianity at that time, abortion was absolutely forbidden -- illegal, and also against doctrine¹¹. So if you had a child you had to give birth to it, which meant that under the economic conditions of the time, the child became a burden on the family's livelihood. People living in modern times cannot understand this -- cannot understand what kind of burden a person, an infant, could become. At that time it truly was a very serious burden: there was not enough to eat, no food to give the child.

So, before baptism, these infants were killed. Because once a child was baptized, it became a sacred life, possessing a soul's right to exist -- this was a concept conferred by religion -- so you could no longer kill it casually. But before baptism, the parents could dispose of the child. When Seth discussed the population problem, he talked about some of the characteristics of the fourth century AD. At that time, baptism, infants, and records were all very chaotic, so many issues were discussed, but his memory was not complete enough, and he could not record them all.

Let us look at the main text of this session's dictation. A great deal has been said earlier, including from Chapter 3, Chapter 4, and even starting from Chapter 2, he has been emphasizing the importance of conscious beliefs. Then many people would say: since the conscious mind is so important, does that mean our inner self is no longer important? Does that mean the viewpoint is now reversed from what we learned in Seth Speaks? When we studied Seth Speaks, we suddenly discovered that we have an inner self, a soul, and that it is indeed very important -- it is our core. But in The Nature of Personal Reality, Seth suddenly flips this argument around, emphasizing the importance of your personal conscious beliefs. So many people develop a misunderstanding and say: you said the inner self is so important, and now you say conscious beliefs are so important -- what is going on? Is the inner self no longer important?

At this point Seth comes out to explain:

I have not underplayed the importance of the inner self.

He did not say he was ignoring the importance of the inner self.

Its -- referring to the inner self -- inexhaustible resources are however at the command of your conscious mind, and for your conscious purposes.

You must remember this sentence -- it is about the relationship between the inner self and your conscious mind. The inner self is like a treasure house of very complete resources, containing everything you could need. Which potentials you develop at any given time is entirely up to your conscious mind to choose -- what kind of material, what kind of content, what kind of abilities it wants to obtain, it goes and gets them. Seth is saying he is not saying the inner self is unimportant. The inner self is like a treasure house, like a treasure trove, and it is very important. But what you go into the treasure house -- or into the treasure trove -- to take out, is entirely determined by your own conscious mind.

So after finishing Seth Speaks, in The Nature of Personal Reality, Seth comes right out and emphasizes the importance of your conscious, aware mind. He pulls you back from a purely soul-seeking orientation, right back into practical daily life -- he pulls you back and makes you land. He does not deny, nor does he say, "this three-dimensional world is unimportant, your inner self is more important, let us all go do meditation and spiritual practice, do not pay attention to the external material world, your own thoughts are not important, these thoughts are not important, you should get rid of them all; these are all empty, all nothing, including this physical body, including this world -- it is all nothing, there is no need to spend too much energy on it." Seth is here to tell you: that is not what he means.

Seth pauses for a moment.

Your ideas about the conscious mind are roughly divided into two schools.

Basically there are two schools, and it is still the same today.

On the one hand, there are those who place great faith in the conscious mind.

These are the people who emphasize materialism and scientism.

While at the same time misunderstanding its nature and function. The proponents of the theory of "the supremacy of the conscious reasoning mind" therefore maintain that man should make full use of his reason and intellect, while at the same time not admitting that their source is the inner self.

One school believes we should use our reason and intellect -- people today are all doing this -- but at the same time denies that their source is the inner self.

Therefore, these people expect the conscious mind to operate independently.

Because they want to emphasize the role of the conscious mind, they hope the conscious mind can operate independently. In such a case, the highly intuitive inner data that could have been used by them gets ignored -- that is, they cut the conscious mind off from inner data, refusing to acknowledge its source.

It is supposed that the conscious mind should not be aware of such data.

But any person nevertheless knows quite well -- intuitive hunches, inspirations, precognitions, clairvoyant perceptions of that kind, often rise up from the depths of the mind and become conscious knowledge; they cannot be stopped. Although you say your conscious mind has no relationship with your inner self and you have no inner data, these intuitive things keep bubbling up and become things you can perceive.

Usually they are pushed aside and ignored.

They are those intuitive messages that come from within. Because others have already told you that the conscious mind should not endorse such "nonsense," should not pay attention to this inner "nonsense." So others tell you to trust your conscious mind, while at the same time making you believe that the conscious mind can only perceive stimuli from the external material world. This is one group of people -- those who emphasize intellect, emphasize reason.

The other group emphasizes the inner self, the great value of the emotional, the ontological, at the expense of the conscious mind.

The second group is the opposite: they especially emphasize inner things and deny the role of the conscious mind.

These theories hold that the intellect and ordinary consciousness are far inferior to the inner unconscious portion of the self.

That is, the intellect and the inner unconscious portion of the self are vastly different in quality.

And all the answers are not to be seen by us.

All the answers you do not know; all the answers cannot be seen by us; they are all inner, the kind of thing that cannot be spoken of, that breaks the moment you speak of it.

The followers of this belief consider the conscious mind to be worth less than nothing.

This is similar to those who emphasize emptiness, who emphasize monism and deny the value of dualism.

Making it almost seem like an arrogant malignant tumor growing on the human psyche.

They treat the conscious mind like a malignant tumor -- not only does it not help, it actually blocks progress and understanding. They believe that all our consciousness, all conscious things, are obstacles to spiritual progress and spiritual development -- all bad. All such conscious things, all thoughts, notions, and ideas are bad, should all be cut off, should all be eliminated. So they come up with many formulations about how to settle my mind, how to make myself have no thoughts, how to make my brain empty and still and quiet with nothing in it, no thoughts at all -- because they think these are all no good, all useless, all these things hinder their development.

Both groups ignore one fundamental issue -- they ignore the miraculous unity of the psyche.

They ignore this fundamental issue.

That is, the delicate and natural interaction that exists between the so-called conscious mind and the so-called unconscious.

He uses the phrase "so-called" -- actually there is no such division -- that delicate and natural interaction; they ignore the very delicate and natural functioning between them, which is to say they are one.

The unbelievably rich interplay as they give and take with each other.

That is, when the conscious mind and the inner unconscious give and take with each other, they give to each other -- you give to me, I give to you, they help each other -- in this process, they have a rich interaction. So the miraculous unity of these two is something neither school has noticed.

The unconscious contains a great portion of your own experience.

Indeed it contains a very large portion.

Again, your conscious mind was meant to look into the exterior world and into the interior one. The conscious mind is a vehicle for the expression of the soul in corporeal terms.

He has said this before, so we will not repeat it.

The conscious mind is the method by which you assess temporal experience, and you assess it according to your beliefs about the nature of reality.

You assess it through your beliefs about the nature of reality.

It automatically causes your body to react in certain ways.

It automatically causes an instinctive reaction.

I will repeat again, tirelessly: your reality, your body and its condition, your personal relationships, your environment, and even the entirety of your civilization and world, are all the result of your beliefs.

He emphasizes it once more.

Your beliefs automatically attract the corresponding emotional feelings, which are then actualized through the imagination. I do not hesitate to repeat myself here, because this is simply too important. Your imagination and feelings follow your beliefs, not the other way around.

He has said this at least five, six, seven, eight times already -- your imagination and feelings follow your beliefs, not the reverse.

If we take a brief and harmless example: you often meet a person, and in your heart you think, "he really gives me a headache, this person is so annoying." Then when you interact with him in the future, you really do get a headache -- and it is by no means a coincidence. Why? Because this is a quite conscious suggestion -- this is a suggestion you gave yourself. Because when you saw this person, you had thought that this person would definitely cause me trouble in the future, definitely not someone easy to deal with, not someone easy to handle. It was a suggestion you gave yourself.

And it is not realized symbolically -- it is not a symbolic way of saying "oh, this person is difficult to deal with" -- but rather it is realized very literally, very actually. In life he really does -- or at work he really does -- make things difficult for you, opposing you at every turn.

In other words, the conscious mind issues the command, and the inner self carries it out.

You must remember this, remember this sentence. From a certain angle, the conscious mind issues the commands, and your inner self mobilizes all its abilities to manifest and execute them. So when you feel this person is difficult to deal with, in the end it manifests that this person really does become difficult to deal with -- it always takes your thoughts seriously.

In this life, you are physically oriented, you are corporeal, so it can be certain that your conscious, physically oriented mind was meant to play the role of making deductions about the nature of physical reality.

Because you are physical, you yourself are a physical body, so of course you must make deductions about the nature of physical reality. Otherwise you would not have free will.

In Western culture, since the Industrial Revolution, man has come to believe more and more that there is little relationship between the individual and the world at large.

Beginning around 1760¹², human beings came to believe more and more that there is little relationship between the individual and all things in the world. Since this is not a history book, I will not go deeply into the reasons behind this idea, will not discuss its historical causes, but will simply point out that it was an overreaction to earlier religious concepts -- because previously we placed too much emphasis on religion and did not value science, so after the Industrial Revolution, when we came to value science, we again overreacted against religion and stopped valuing religion altogether.

So much so that, at least in your terms, before that time people did believe that they could influence matter and environment through thought.

Before the Industrial Revolution, people did believe this.

With the advent of the Industrial Revolution, even the various elements of nature lost their living qualities in our eyes. They became things that could be classified, named, dissected, and examined.

We speak of the chemical elements, over 100 elements, the periodic table -- after Mendeleev discovered it¹³, the various elements of nature lost their living qualities in our eyes. We dissected all the things of nature, and the spiritual quality of nature became completely invisible, treated as something that could be decomposed, something that could be dissected. It is as if nature no longer had any mystery -- water is composed of water molecules, water molecules are composed of hydrogen atoms and oxygen atoms, and so on and so forth. All the things of the world are decomposed using all kinds of chemical, physical, and natural laws, as if we humans had become the spirit of this world, coming to summarize, distribute, categorize, and classify all things in the world.

You would not dissect your beloved pet cat or dog.

No one would dissect their beloved pet cat or dog, because when you dissect the universe in the manner of biological dissection, you have already lost the feeling of love for it. Because you love your cat or dog, you would not kill it and dissect it. When you dissect the universe in the manner of biological dissection, man has already lost his love for the universe -- that is, the feeling of love for this universe. To him, the thing being dissected has become something without a soul.

Only under such circumstances could he examine it without qualms of conscience, and turn a deaf ear to the living protests.

So Jane's voice became louder and much deeper as she spoke. When man dissects the universe, he is in fact not treating the universe as a living, vital thing; he considers the universe to be dead. Because only when the universe is dead can you dissect it without qualms of conscience, without the unease of dissecting a living body. But then, even when you treat it as dead, you turn a deaf ear to those living protests.

Therefore, in his great fascination with what makes these things work -- referring to human beings -- in man's great curiosity to understand, say, the life脉络 of a flower, man forgot what could be learned by smelling a flower, by looking closely at a flower, or by observing its serene self-contentment.

We forgot that we could learn the meaning of a flower's life by smelling a flower, by looking at a flower, by observing it.

So man examined dead nature.

We kill the flower, then observe it under a microscope, looking at the cells of the petals, the composition of the petals. He thinks that one must often take life -- kill the flower -- in order to know the truth of its life. We do the same with other animals; we dissect all kinds of small animals.

When you must first deprive a thing of its life, you will never understand what gave it life.

When you first deprive it of its life, you cannot understand what it lives by. So the current Western science's understanding of life is very shallow. It seems to be dissecting, to be studying at a microscopic level in great detail, but what is it studying? It is studying dead things -- living things, it cannot study. It studies life on corpses, studies life on cells, but it does not study life by placing the human being as a whole within the perspective of nature. So it studies life on a dead corpse, and therefore it does not know where life comes from, nor why life lives.

Therefore when man learned to classify and dissect nature, he no longer felt its living quality, nor did he feel himself to be a part of it.

When we classified, numbered, and dissected nature, man could no longer feel the living quality of nature, nor could he feel that man is a part of nature.

In so doing, man denied his own heritage to a considerable degree.

He forgot his own heritage, forgot his own heritage to a considerable degree.

So this spirit, born in nature and in the soul, and for a time housed in the flesh -- it forgot to what extent it was.

Because spirit is born in nature -- nature has spirit; and in the soul -- our soul also has spiritual things; and for a time it also exists in the physical body -- our physical body also contains spirit.

Man's thoughts seemed no longer able to affect nature in any way.

Because he cut himself off from it, believing that nature is nature and man is man, and they are not one. So man's thoughts seemed no longer able to affect nature in any way, because in his heart he no longer regarded himself as a part of nature.

In an ambiguous way, man focused upon nature's exterior images with a highly conscious attitude, while at the same time still denying the conscious power of his own mind.

It became a very ambiguous relationship: he acknowledged the external images of nature, yet he denied his own conscious power over nature. He became blind, no longer able to see the relationship between his thoughts and his material environment and experience -- he could no longer see the connection between these external things and his internal things.

Nature then became an adversary that he must control.

Nature became his opponent. We often say "struggle against heaven and earth," "we must conquer nature," "we must subdue nature" -- we treat it as an enemy, and only toward an enemy would one say such things.

But privately he felt himself at the mercy of nature.

No matter how great the great man, no matter how loudly he shouts slogans on the surface, like "man will conquer heaven," "we must struggle against heaven and earth, and find boundless joy in it" -- he is only saying it. Outside of political occasions, in his heart he fears nature more than anyone. He will also go to fortune-tellers, he will also pray to gods and Buddhas, he also reveres heaven and reveres earth, and he is also afraid. So he is a two-faced person: on the surface he says "nature is nothing, we can conquer it," but privately he is still afraid, and deep down he still knows he cannot escape being at the mercy of nature.

For when he cut himself off from nature, he also cut himself off from many of his own abilities. The great distortion of the nature of the conscious mind began from there.

The schools of psychology that arose in its wake then assigned those unrecognized or denied powers to the unconscious.

The schools of psychology then assigned those unrecognized or denied powers to the unconscious.

Thus the very natural functions of the conscious mind were driven underground.

The conscious mind's very natural function -- the ability to consciously create our external reality -- we called it a subconscious function, turned it into an unconscious function. We took this very normal, natural function of the conscious mind and made it an underground thing, excluded it from normal operation. This is very interesting.

Let us write the book first -- because the conscious mind was so emphasized, while at the same time many of its characteristics were stripped away, an overreaction was produced, and normal consciousness was instead denigrated.

These are all erroneous feelings about the conscious mind, overreactions -- that is, placing special emphasis on the conscious mind actually suppresses its normal conscious responses.

Under such circumstances, emotions and imagination became things far superior to consciousness.

What does this mean? Consciousness originally had very strong abilities; it could guide emotions and imagination. But because of your overreaction -- your excessive emphasis on consciousness -- you did not actually emphasize consciousness; instead you emphasized emotions and imagination, and so the original functions of consciousness were denigrated. What are you strengthening? You are strengthening emotions, feelings, and imagination.

And the misplaced powers of consciousness were still assigned to the unconscious.

The function that consciousness originally had -- it should consciously, through beliefs, guide your emotions and your imagination toward the realization of your external world -- but you said this is not the conscious mind, this is not an ability consciousness should have, this must be something you create in the unconscious. You pushed it onto the unconscious, and therefore you did not exhaust every effort to reach those states of consciousness that seemed unreachable in normal states -- especially those unconscious states that supposedly cannot be obtained under normal circumstances.

What was originally something your consciousness could decide, you insisted on saying "no, this is something only the unconscious can decide," and then you went looking for it in the unconscious, but you could not enter the unconscious, so it became a path with no way forward. So this turned the matter into a dead end, into a fabricated result with no way to find an answer.

For this purpose, people used drugs and founded cults.

For what purpose? To always go into the unconscious to search for those parts that should have been the function of consciousness in the first place. So we have all kinds of sects, all kinds of religions -- esoteric schools, various exoteric schools, various religions, and also lineages -- everywhere filled with all kinds of secret methods, training guides, and things of that sort.

In fact, there is no inner knowledge or experience that is unattainable.

There is nothing you fundamentally cannot obtain -- cannot obtain in the physical body -- no such experience or knowledge.

All of it can be known to your consciousness and used to enrich the reality you know.

Your conscious mind was originally able to see both the outside and the inside, so if you look inward you can obtain this. It is not that it fundamentally cannot be obtained; it can absolutely be obtained.

The conscious mind is not some prodigal son, not some poor relation.

He is using a metaphor -- it is not some unwelcome person.

It can focus upon your inner reality quite freely, as long as you understand that it has this ability.

If you believe it has this ability, you can obtain inner information.

Again, you have a conscious mind -- that is, the conscious mind -- and you can change the focus of consciousness.

This was specifically discussed in Chapters 18 and 19 of Seth Speaks -- how to change the focus of your consciousness to explore these inner realms.

People have for various reasons saddled themselves with arbitrary ideas, yet the most arbitrary idea of all is the belief that the conscious mind has no connection whatsoever with the source of man's own existence.

The most arbitrary idea is this one.

That he is cut off from nature, and that the individual is therefore at the mercy of unconscious drives he cannot control.

This modern erroneous viewpoint -- much of modern human psychology consists of erroneous viewpoints -- holds that we cannot control it, that it is a behavior driven by unconscious forces that we humans cannot control. This is very interesting: we believe that our own things, our own thoughts, are completely beyond our control. So under this viewpoint, since you cannot control the unconscious, what do you do? Because it cannot be controlled, people develop a sense of powerlessness.

If the purpose of civilization is to enable each person to live in peace, joy, safety, and abundance, then the aforementioned idea is truly of no benefit to him.

What does he mean? He says, if the purpose of our human life -- if the purpose of civilization and existence -- is to attain peace, joy, safety, and abundance, then how could you as a person be left at the mercy of unconscious drives? And beyond your control? Then how could you attain peace? How could you attain safety? How could you attain joy? How could you attain abundance? In itself this is impossible. Since he created you to let you experience this world, and human civilization has developed to where it is today, its purpose is not to turn itself into a kind of human being that seems completely uncontrolled and unconsciously driven. He wants to use this counterexample to prove that this view is wrong.

When people feel that their personal experience of reality has no connection at all with the outer world, they lose even the pure sense of competence and belonging that animals possess.

Animals are very clear about their relationship with nature -- they know their relationship with the natural world -- yet humans have forcibly cut themselves off from nature.

Once again, your beliefs form your reality, shaping your life and all its conditions.

He says it once again -- this has been said who knows how many times.

The inner self possesses all power, and it can all be activated because of your conscious beliefs.

Underline this sentence. The inner self possesses all power -- remember, it possesses all power -- and it can all be activated because of your conscious beliefs. Be sure to remember, it is conscious beliefs. Do not push it onto that level of "as soon as you mention the inner self, you push it onto the unconscious." It can be activated and mobilized through your conscious beliefs. Only in this way does our free will have meaning. What is free will? It is acting according to your own ideas.

So your conscious beliefs are extremely important.

Because you do not believe that conscious thoughts create your life, you therefore lose your sense of responsibility for your thoughts.

You have no sense of responsibility for your thoughts -- you do not believe that thoughts can create the world, so you have no control over or sense of responsibility for your thoughts.

Others tell you that no matter what your beliefs are, you are under the threat of unconscious conditioning.

Others will tell you a false belief -- what belief? That is, no matter what your beliefs are, no matter how strong your beliefs are, you are still under the conditioning and threat of the unconscious. It is useless -- your beliefs are useless, and you are certainly under the control of the unconscious -- you as a person are under the control of the unconscious. Many psychologists will tell you this.

The entire next sentence should be underlined: As long as you hold that conscious belief for even one day, you will experience it as fact for that day.

What he means is, if the above sentence -- "no matter what your beliefs are, your unconscious always conditions you and always threatens you, and you are always under the threat of the unconscious" -- if you believe this belief above, then as long as you still believe it for even one day, you will experience it as a fact every day. What kind of fact? You will be threatened by it, and you will be conditioned by it. Because you believe this belief, you will really be conditioned by this unconscious, and you will really be threatened by this unconscious. He underlines this as important -- you are threatened and conditioned by this kind of thing not because of the fact itself, but because you hold such a belief. Can you understand this? Because you have such a belief, such a fact will then occur.

In all these passages, Jane's delivery was very focused and energetic. I could easily feel Seth staring directly at me through Jane's wide-open eyes -- this is Rob's own feeling.

Then Seth continued: Some of your beliefs originate in your childhood.

Some of your beliefs originate in your childhood -- you grew up from childhood, and you inherited a great deal from your parents, including childhood experiences.

But you are not at their mercy.

You will not be at their mercy.

Unless you believe you are dominated by them.

When you believe in this theory about your family of origin, then you are dominated by it and at its mercy; when you no longer believe in that nonsense today, you are no longer at its mercy.

Because your imagination follows your beliefs, you may find yourself caught in a vicious circle. You often imagine in your mind those pictures that reinforce the negative aspects of your life.

You often imagine those negative pictures, and then they are produced, and then they are realized, and after they are realized they further reinforce your negative beliefs, so you enter a vicious circle.

These imagined events give rise to all kinds of corresponding emotions.

When the things you think about are very pessimistic, you will imagine some pessimistic things -- some bad things that may happen in the future. But when you imagine that bad things may happen in the future, you will produce corresponding emotions, which is very normal.

This automatically brings about hormonal changes in your body, or affects your behavior in dealing with people and affairs, or makes you forever interpret the world according to your own beliefs.

Interpret the world only according to your own beliefs.

In this way, the experiences of daily life seem to prove more and more the things you believe.

This becomes a vicious circle -- first you imagine a bad thing, then this bad thing is realized, and then it further proves that your imagination was right.

The only way to extricate yourself from this vicious circle is to begin to become aware of your own beliefs.

Begin to become aware of your own beliefs, and become aware of your own conscious thoughts.

And change your beliefs so that they are more in line with the kind of reality you want to experience.

Change your own beliefs, become aware of your own thoughts, discover where there is a problem, change it, and then turn it into the kind of reality you want, and keep it consistent with that.

In this way, imagination and emotion will naturally and automatically begin to work, reinforcing the new beliefs.

He has already emphasized this here, and in the previous session he also gave a method. In the previous session, using a substitute emotion or a substitute imagination, he gave a three-pronged method at that time -- if you still remember that three-pronged method, you can review it now. What he is saying here is still the same meaning: only by using that method can you break free from this vicious circle.

As I mentioned, in Session 614 of Chapter 2, the important first step -- the first step to escape from this vicious circle -- is to realize that your beliefs about reality are only your beliefs about reality.

You must understand that beliefs are only beliefs; they are not attributes of reality itself -- they are not facts, they are only beliefs.

You must distinguish clearly between yourself and your beliefs.

Do not treat all your beliefs as part of you; they are only one of your beliefs, one thought, one judgment, one set of values. These values can be replaced at any time as you grow older and as external circumstances change -- they are not part of your physical body, forever inseparable.

Then you must realize that your own beliefs really do materialize.

You must understand that your beliefs really do concretely manifest.

Know that what you believe to be true is true in your experience.

To change this concrete effect, you must first change the original belief.

At the same time, you must be quite clear in your mind that the materialization of the old beliefs may still persist for some time.

If you want to change, you must change from within, from the original belief. But you must understand that after the original belief is changed, it will not take effect immediately -- the effects produced by those old beliefs will still persist for a period of time before the new effects can appear.

However, if you fully understand what I am saying, your new beliefs will very quickly begin to show themselves in your experience.

If you can fully understand what he is saying, the new beliefs will very quickly show themselves in your experience.

But you must not worry about whether they appear or not.

Do not worry about whether they can be realized.

Because this worry will make you afraid that the new ideas will not be materialized, and this fear therefore negates the very goal you want to achieve.

Why? It is what was said earlier -- after you plant this seed, do not keep digging it up to look at it. Why? Because the subconscious behind your digging it up is that you do not believe it will grow -- it is because you do not believe it that you keep looking at it and checking it. Your not believing is one of your beliefs. Because you do not believe, your fear, your feeling that it probably cannot be realized -- this disbelief and this fear themselves are negating your new belief. So it means: just cultivate, and do not ask about the harvest.

I mentioned in this Session 619 that there was a game. What game? It is playing a game with your conscious mind.

Remember? In Session 619 it was said -- first you must choose, with a playful attitude, one idea that you want to materialize. We can try it now: choose one idea that you want to realize in reality, just one. Then in your mind begin to imagine its happening, imagine it vividly.

Understand that all events are at first mental and spiritual things, and they will concretely manifest in physical ways.

But do not keep constantly watching yourself; just keep playing. In other words, stay in the joy of playing this game, and do not ask what the result of the game will be. This is the state of mind you should maintain.

If you want to manifest an idea, just play with it. How do you play with it? You imagine it, imagine its details, imagine it vividly, imagine the result of this matter already realized -- the more real and detailed the imagination, the better, and then also imagine the feeling at that time, and bring out that emotion as well. Let yourself live in that emotion, in that state. It is that simple.

But at this time do not observe yourself and say, "Oh dear, has it been realized or not?" Do not take out your phone and check whether the money in your bank account has increased -- do not do that; doing that will actually affect you. If you imagine with enough detail and enough vividness, you will become immersed in the world you imagined at that time, so just let yourself be immersed in that imagined world and play this game well. To put it even more extremely, if you imagine it real enough, then you have already begun living that kind of life, and you no longer need to wake up and return to the real world. In saying this, I hope you can understand the inner meaning of what I am saying -- just imagine it, just play this game, and do not keep looking at the result.

Actually, you are playing this game right now.

Actually, we are playing this game every day -- we often automatically translate whatever beliefs we have, and whatever beliefs there are will be realized for you.

However, the truly important thing is that you must first distinguish your own beliefs clearly.

You must distinguish clearly between yourself and your own beliefs -- which are your beliefs, and which are you.

You do not need to whip yourself violently on a conscious level.

There is no need to whip yourself violently on a conscious level. As was said earlier, it is very difficult for you to do this on a conscious level. You always say, "I must have positive thoughts, I must be great and glorious and upright, I must have that kind of positive chicken-soup-for-the-soul thing every day," and use that to indoctrinate yourself every day -- he says do not do this, do not use this method.

You must learn to use imagination and emotion as your tools, as your helpers.

When on a conscious or rational level it is very difficult for you to treat this pretense as real, then use your emotion and imagination to help you -- treat it as real in the space of imagination and in the state of emotion. Because on a rational level you cannot convince yourself. On a rational level you cannot whip yourself, nor can you convince yourself. You say your life is rather difficult right now, and you use reason to convince yourself that you are very rich -- I am just like Jack Ma, I am very rich -- but you are not, and you yourself know that you cannot deceive yourself. If you cannot even deceive yourself, then how can you manifest it?

Then what should you do at this time? He says you must learn to use your imagination and emotion to help, and let these two act as your allies to help you. Under the command of your consciousness, they -- that is, imagination and emotion -- will automatically play their role. You must believe that they automatically play their role; do not ask how they play their role. Seth did not explain how they play their role, and you do not need to care how they play their role -- that is another set of mechanisms. You do not need to master the principles in between right now; you only need to know that they will automatically play their role. If you use your imagination and emotion, they will play their role; you must believe this.

Then you can see why it is so important to examine all beliefs, whether the belief concerns yourself or the nature of your reality.

Because your beliefs are so important, you must examine them at all times.

Any one belief, as long as you let it go, will lead you to another belief.

As long as you let one belief be realized, it can lead you to the next belief -- one belief will lead to another.

Many people have claimed that if imagination and willpower come into conflict, then imagination always wins.

This is what many people tell you -- if imagination and willpower conflict, imagination will certainly win.

But I want to tell you that if you examine yourself, you will find that this emphasizes that imagination and willpower never conflict.

Imagination and willpower never conflict. What example does he give here? He will give examples later; we will not expand on it now. For example, you imagine yourself becoming thinner, your figure being perfect -- this is what you imagine -- but in real life, your willpower gets greedy again and wants to eat, right? At this time you become very passive, so what do you do? So at this time, your beliefs may perhaps conflict -- your beliefs may conflict -- but your imagination always follows your willpower, your conscious thoughts, and your beliefs.

If you have not yet perceived this, it is because you have not yet completely examined your beliefs.

If you have not yet discovered this, it is because you have not carefully examined your beliefs.

Let me give a simple example to help you understand: if you are overweight, too fat, and you have tried dieting without success, and then you tell yourself you want to lose weight.

This is something everyone often encounters.

Up to now, you have taken in everything I have said.

That is, what you just said -- the theory Seth just explained, you have also taken it in.

So you change your belief and say: since beliefs can determine things, you say, because I believed I was overweight, I really became overweight, but now I have changed course and imagine myself having an ideal weight.

I have changed my belief; now I have an ideal weight.

But then you find that you still eat too much. In your mind, you still see yourself as overweight.

You still see yourself as quite fat.

You are still imagining those candies and pastries, and you still want to eat them. And in your terms, you surrender to your imagination.

You want to lose weight and control your mouth, but under the imagination of those delicious foods, you surrender, fail to control yourself, and go eat again.

So you think willpower is completely useless, and conscious thought has no power at all.

Thought simply cannot control yourself -- you will find that thought is completely useless, and consciousness is also useless. "My subconscious is at work; I still want to eat, and I am still fat."

But suppose you move beyond this point, and in total despair you say: all right, let me look one level deeper at my beliefs.

What does it mean to move beyond this point? It means you discover that you have already failed before -- you have already surrendered to imagination -- and then at this time you will say, then let me look again at what my deeper belief is. This itself is a hypothetical case, not a real case; every case is different.

You can take any one of countless beliefs.

For example, you will find that among the beliefs below you can take one.

For example, you believe that you as a person have no value.

This is on a deeper level; this is a deeper belief.

Therefore you should not look attractive.

Because you have no value, you should not look that good, and your figure should not be that perfect -- you do not deserve such a perfect figure. You have no value anyway; you are not a model, not a star, not an influencer, so why would you need such a perfect weight?

Or that weight is a sign of health, while being slender is dangerous.

In your heart you believe this belief -- being a little fat is quite good, being sturdy is also good for the body. If in the future you catch this virus -- COVID pneumonia -- you can still physically resist a bit, your resistance is stronger, and your immunity is stronger. Here he is giving several possible inner beliefs.

Or you may discover that you believe you are so fragile and may be bullied at any time, so you need a certain amount of weight.

Boys will have this state -- feeling that if they are too thin they will easily be bullied, and having a bit of weight is better.

Before those people push you around, they will think twice.

In all these situations, these ideas will be ones you can be aware of -- you often harbor such thoughts.

Your imagination and emotions are consistent with them, not in conflict.

Your imagination and emotions will all be consistent with these -- the "them" here refers to the underlying beliefs mentioned earlier, such as having no value and so on -- all consistent.

Do you want to rest or end?

He asked Rob -- he said let us take a break. He looked at him, and continued. Let us see what he says next.

You may be poor, and you are still poor now, but after hearing my suggestion, you may try to change your thoughts and beliefs, and you say: everything I need has already been satisfied, and I am very abundant.

You have changed your belief; the first belief has changed.

Yet you find that you still cannot pay your bills.

Although you have changed your belief, you find you still cannot pay your bills, and your credit card is still not paid off. In your imagination, you may see that the next bill has already arrived, or that there is still some debt to repay on your Huabei, or how much more on your credit card is about to be due, yet there is no way to pay.

Then you say: I will certainly have enough money; this is my new belief, but the situation has not improved at all.

You have changed your belief, but the situation has not changed.

So you think: my conscious thoughts are completely useless.

You see, it is useless -- I changed my belief, I thought I had money, but I still have no money, the bills still come, the debts still have to be repaid, and the money in my account has not increased.

But after examining your beliefs, you may discover that you firmly believe you are worthless.

He says, for example -- after examining all your beliefs, you discover that the reason you are still in this state is that you have an even deeper belief, and within that belief you will discover that you are worthless, and you firmly believe you are worthless.

You may find yourself thinking this way: I am insignificant to begin with; the rich will get richer, and the poor will only get poorer; the mechanism of this society will inevitably lead to this social division.

I belong to the category of the poor.

The whole world is against me; money is not a good thing; rich people have no spirituality.

There are many beliefs that lead to poverty, and you may have discovered one of them, which makes you not want money or afraid of having money.

In any case, your imagination and beliefs always go hand in hand.

No matter how you put it, these two things, your imagination and your beliefs, always go hand in hand.

Let me give another example: perhaps you want to remember your dreams, and every night you give yourself the appropriate suggestion, saying "I want to remember my dreams." Before going to sleep you want to remember your dreams, and then when you wake up your head is still empty, completely empty. Then you will say, "You see, I consciously wanted to remember my dreams, but my suggestion had no effect" -- therefore what I want on a conscious level does not count at all. So you deny the role of your own consciousness.

Seth's meaning is that here it is not that your conscious things did not work; it is that you have an even deeper belief that you have not discovered or dug out. What belief is it?

If you carefully examine this belief, you will find one of many possible beliefs.

For example, you have a belief that "I dare not remember my dreams," or "My dreams are always unpleasant dreams, so why would I remember them," or "I am very afraid of what I dreamed," or "Although I really want to remember my dreams, they may tell me something I do not want to know." These underlying beliefs may all affect your final inability to remember your dreams.

In this situation, your beliefs also color your reality.

That is, those underlying beliefs just dug out.

And your experience is the direct result of your conscious state of mind. With the kind of mentality just mentioned, you clamp down on your inner self, deliberately obstruct your own experience, and reinforce the negative parts of your existence.

His meaning is that in the process of your being unaware, you will deliberately prevent this conscious thing from being realized -- precisely in order to reinforce the idea that "conscious things are ineffective," and also to reinforce those negative thoughts, the negative parts of your existence.

Only by examining these beliefs of yours can you understand your own position.

I have absolutely no intention of emphasizing only those negative thoughts.

When he says to emphasize your beliefs, he does not mean to emphasize only the negative -- he does not mean that examining beliefs means examining only negative ones.

I suggest that you pay attention to those areas of your life that are satisfying or well done, and then see clearly how you personally strengthen those beliefs through emotion and imagination.

That is, when you discover the satisfying or well-done areas of your life, you should study and learn how you strengthen those good beliefs through emotion or imagination.

Then bring this method into practice, realize how naturally and automatically those results appear, and then seize that feeling of accomplishment.

That is, that feeling in which good beliefs happen naturally and automatically with the help of your emotion and your imagination -- seize this feeling, understand it, and use the same method elsewhere. Therefore, when you now examine those good beliefs and good results, the greatest help to you is to apply them to the places you want to realize -- after those good beliefs have occurred, discover what help imagination and feeling or emotion provided in the middle, and then how you can use this imagination and emotion to provide help for yourself in the direction you want, to help you strengthen your new beliefs.

He says that on this topic he has basically finished speaking. This session had already gone on until twelve o'clock -- he started speaking at after nine and spoke until twelve. The content of this session is also rather long, so today we will introduce it up to here.

Session 622

The Spread and Change of Beliefs

Let us look at Session 622 of the book, October 18, 1973, Wednesday, starting from this session. We will not spend too much time interpreting the introductory material before the main text; let us go straight to the main text. It begins by saying:

You can also spread your beliefs to other people.

The point here lies in what we said earlier -- your conscious personal beliefs can change your future life, or change your present circumstances. And such beliefs can not only influence yourself, but can also influence others.

When guests come to your home, what they see of your home is not exactly the same as what you yourself see. Guests look at your home through the filter of their own beliefs. However, within your own environment, your personal beliefs still carry a great deal of weight. In your own world, your personal beliefs are still primary.

People with similar ideas will reinforce each other's beliefs, which is what is meant by "birds of a feather flock together" and "people group according to kind." So when you suddenly decide to change your beliefs, and want to change your environment by changing your beliefs, you may encounter some misunderstanding. Depending on the situation, you may move in a direction entirely different from the group you belong to, and other people may feel it necessary to defend the ideas that all of you originally took for granted.

You people who grouped together by kind came together because you shared common beliefs. Because you now want to change your own beliefs, your beliefs may no longer be consistent with those of the other people in the group. But everyone feels they ought to defend the beliefs that everyone agreed upon at the very beginning, and they want to pull you back. When you formed this group in the first place, each person held his own ideas about reality for certain seemingly reasonable reasons, and these beliefs met their needs.

When you suddenly change your beliefs, then within this group you no longer hold the same position, because you are no longer playing that game. So in the early stage of changing your beliefs, you will encounter a great deal of incomprehension from the people around you, and even a feeling of rejection and estrangement. You may suddenly no longer provide others with a need that you previously satisfied for them -- as a member of this group, you provided others with a service they needed, or your very existence was itself a need of theirs. For example, whether you are in a football team, or a startup team, or a band, no matter what kind of group it is, your existence provided them with something they needed. But because of your withdrawal or your change of beliefs, you no longer provide them with that need.

This affects not only intimate behavior, but also social interaction -- the changes between you and the people around you have an impact on the development of society. What is very intriguing is that this was Rob's own feeling: they had already begun to sense the occurrence of these frictions. Because the students in the ESP class, as well as Jane and Rob, were all applying the methods mentioned in this Seth book, and were all changing their beliefs. The ESP class students in particular came from all walks of life, so during this practice, these people would often tell us the same kind of episode -- friction exists, friction between you and your original group.

So then, when you shift from one set of beliefs to another, for a period of time you will feel a sense of loss. However, other people who share your new beliefs will also be drawn to you, and you will be drawn to them.

When you shift from one set of beliefs to another set of beliefs, there is a transitional period in between during which you will feel rather lost. This sense of loss comes from the estrangement the old group directs at you, while the new group has not yet fully formed. At this time, your new beliefs will attract people of the kind that match your beliefs to draw near, and these people will also attract you. For example, if you have studied the Seth material, before you may have felt that there were very few people in society who studied the Seth material or researched spirituality, but suddenly you will discover that this is actually not the case -- there are a great many people in this society engaged in spiritual research and study. You will be drawn to others and join various groups, such as all kinds of reading clubs, study classes, and various spiritual study groups. Before, you may not have noticed any of this and thought you were the only one, but when you suddenly join a QQ group or a WeChat group, you will discover: hey, how come there are so many people who all share the same beliefs and the same ideas?

Regarding this, I will say more later in this book. This principle can explain:

Why it is that when a person suddenly decides to go on a diet to lose weight, he will encounter open or covert resistance from family or friends; why it is that when a person makes a resolution, he will be troubled by the ridicule of colleagues; why it is that when an alcoholic works hard to quit drinking, he is constantly subjected to open temptation from others, or secretly lured by schemes to entice him to continue sinking into it.

These are all very interesting things.

When a sick person begins to walk the road to recovery by changing his beliefs, he will be very surprised to find that even his closest friends will suddenly feel uneasy, and will remind him of the reality that he is afflicted with a serious illness.

It is very strange: when you want to lose weight, you hope to change your beliefs and hope to change such a fact, yet you will find that the people around you are not like that. They will give you open or covert resistance, and will tempt you in all sorts of ways: they will make you a good meal, and then say that dieting like this is too hard on you, that it might cause other health problems in your body, that dieting is not a very good method, and so on. The same is true when you want to recover: you have clearly changed your beliefs and said that you are going to change your beliefs, but your friends will tell you: your illness is very serious, you should not engage in this kind of activity, it is not good for your physical health, you are already in bad shape, you should rest and preserve your current strength. They keep treating you as a sick person, looking at you in the way one looks at a sick person, which is in fact openly or covertly hinting to you all along: you are a sick person.

What this session mainly discusses is the mutual influence between people in the area of beliefs. When you change your own beliefs, how can you avoid being influenced by others -- otherwise the influence of others on you will also diminish the effect of your belief change.

Because beliefs form reality -- reality is the framework of your experience -- of course any change in beliefs must also change this framework, and in turn trigger changes of some degree in other areas.

Reality is fact; this physical world or three-dimensional world is the framework of your experience, and your experience must be generated within this reality. Any change in your beliefs means changing this framework; the moment your beliefs change, the framework changes along with them. Because this framework changes, it will also bring about changes of some degree in other areas, because your external material world has also changed. The present circumstances that originally served a certain purpose no longer exist, new factors are introduced, and another new creative process begins.

Because there are other people who share your private beliefs, and because of the interaction between people, any decisive change you make in direction will necessarily be felt by others.

When your beliefs change, and the external decisions you make begin to change, other people will also respond to your changes in their own ways. What this session emphasizes is the influence of the people around you after your beliefs change.

He says you are now setting out to experience the fullest and most complete state you can achieve.

In order to achieve this goal, I hope you have at least begun to examine your own beliefs. If you can begin to change some of them, that is even better -- if you have not changed them yet, you should now have already begun to examine them.

You may want to get others to change: I have discovered that many of my mother's beliefs have problems; after studying this, I have discovered that my boyfriend has problems in his beliefs. This thing is so good, can I get him to change a little too? He says you may want others to change, and that is very normal. But if that is the case, you would do better to start with yourself first. This is very sound advice, and everyone must remember it: do not take this knowledge and apply it to others; apply it to yourself first. Do not go around telling others: beliefs can change reality, and I have discovered that the results in your life are caused by such-and-such a negative belief or limiting belief; could you change it, and then your future will improve? Rather than trying to change others, it is better to start with changing yourself.

I told you, in Session 619, to play a game of imagination in which you see yourself acting according to the new beliefs you want.

This has already been said earlier: imagine yourself already living the ideal life, already in the ideal state. When you do this, visualize yourself influencing others in this new way. When you want to change others, first put yourself into a new state, first change your own beliefs, change your own belief system, and then, under this new belief system, go and influence others. Do not use your old belief system to tell others, "You go and change" -- first transform yourself.

It is like the reminder on an airplane: before putting an oxygen mask on someone else, put on your own first. Even if it is your child, or the person you love most, you must put on your own oxygen mask first. That reminder is especially applicable here -- when you want to suggest that others change their beliefs, first complete the transformation of your own belief system, and then use this newly transformed belief system to influence others.

Then you begin to visualize them responding to you in a new manner.

After you have updated your own belief system, when you treat them in a new way, you imagine them responding to you in a new way. This is very important, because you are sending them this inner message by telepathic means. Doing this does not mean you are merely thinking about it -- the moment you think about it in this way, you have already transmitted this message to them through telepathic means. You are telling them: you are changing the conditions and behavior of your relationship. You are broadcasting to everyone that your position has changed. You do not have to use words; your inner declaration, through telepathic means, can be perceived by them, and they can all sense and feel your change.

Some people can understand you quite well on that level, while others still need the old frameworks. If you quit, they will find someone else to fill your vacancy.

Some people may understand very well the idea you want to change, while others cannot accept it. As for these people, either they will withdraw from your life, or they must be deleted from your experience -- they are no longer able to continue walking alongside you.

Let me say it again: if you imagine daily life as a constantly changing three-dimensional animated picture, then you are the one drawing the picture. When beliefs change, experience changes accordingly. However, you must fully accept this idea -- that your beliefs form your experience -- and discard those beliefs that cannot bring you the results you desire.

In The Nature of Personal Reality, the proportion of emphasis and repetition is very high; Seth becomes a nagging, fussy person. I have explained this before, so I will not say more about it -- because these things are not so easy to change.

You must change, throw away, and replace those beliefs that cannot bring you the results you want or the results you expect.

At the same time, you will often find yourself in a situation where you must remind yourself: although you are faced with physical data that seem utterly contradictory, there is still something that is true and unchanging.

You must constantly remind yourself that you may still be faced with seemingly contradictory physical data -- he used the word "seemingly," remember that? But there is still something that is true and unchanging. What is it? It is that your beliefs have already changed, and the things in which your beliefs have changed will influence the results that follow.

You might say: I live in abundance, I lack nothing, I need nothing -- this is a belief you give yourself. But at the same time, your eyes tell you: your desk is piled high with unpaid bills. This is the seemingly contradictory physical data -- these unpaid bills are the seemingly contradictory physical data placed before you.

So you must understand that it is you who manufacture the physical evidence that confronts you.

When you can still see these things, it is you who manufactured them; these unpaid bills were created by you through your beliefs. Then you say: no, I have already changed my beliefs, I have changed to being a person of abundance, I lack nothing, how can I have bills I cannot pay? At this point he tells you: you must dig deep into your beliefs. When the things around you have not yet changed, and still seem to contradict your beliefs, then go and dig deep into your beliefs.

Therefore, when you change your beliefs, the physical evidence will also gradually begin to prove your new beliefs, just as seriously as it previously proved the old beliefs.

You will find that new beliefs produce new evidence to confirm your new beliefs. So you must work on your thoughts; you must work inwardly.

Although beliefs have general categories, general ideas do not affect you that much.

Be sure to remember that these general things do not affect you that much. If you still remember the 21-day meditation practice we did before this course began, you will find that in those 21 days of practice, besides giving you some very positive core central ideas and central thoughts every day, the homework it gave you every day, those specific small tasks, the things that changed the little details of your life, were all very concrete. You must make the change of beliefs concrete in your daily life, rather than stopping at a slogan or a viewpoint. If slogans were that effective, then everyone in the world would be rich, and there would be no poor people -- anyone can shout a couple of slogans: "I want to be rich, I want to be someone like Jack Ma." There are plenty of people like that, and it does not work. Such viewpoints and such beliefs have no effect at all.

Your beliefs must be broken down into real, visible, concrete changes in your actual life. When your beliefs become fine-grained enough to enter into the details of your daily life, your new beliefs will lead you to discover new evidence in your life that proves the influence brought about by these new beliefs. So when we did those meditation practices, we did many specific, practical small assignments, precisely for the purpose of helping you personalize your beliefs.

There are also general reasons behind them, but you must have a personal understanding of your own beliefs.

You do not need to worry about these general reasons, but you must remember the word "must" -- it is definitely "must" -- you must have a personal understanding of your own beliefs. Your personal beliefs must be your own; you cannot deal with them in broad, sweeping terms. We cannot instill in you a belief that says, "This is a belief for becoming a millionaire; if everyone holds to this belief, they can become a billionaire" -- there is no such thing. Your beliefs must be connected with your personality, with your actual living conditions, and with your actual daily life.

Because no two people are exactly alike, another person's beliefs cannot be said to be exactly the same as yours, and they may not necessarily be of any help to you. Because what belongs to him is not practical when it comes to you -- your life is your life, and his life is his life.

Because the old beliefs once had their benefits, and at different periods of your life they once satisfied a need of yours.

In the course of your personalized growth, some old, outdated beliefs were once useful to you. For example, at different stages of your life, that old belief satisfied a need you once had. Remember the example given earlier: you may once have believed that, in and of itself, poverty is more spiritual than abundance. This is a misunderstanding of yours. Deep in your essential heart, you always feel that those masters, those otherworldly sages, eminent monks, and great virtuous teachers must have nothing to do with money, and certainly cannot be fat and well-fed. And those tycoons and richest men of the world surely have no spiritual pursuits; they have only achieved success in wealth, and spiritually they must be lacking. A person with spiritual pursuits must be a person of modest means, with no pursuit of material life -- only then can he have spiritual pursuits.

This viewpoint is held by many people. Because you hold this viewpoint, it will lead to the final result that you live in an environment of modest means. So after I finished the first book, Seth Speaks, I immediately began a 21-day meditation practice on abundance, precisely to help you fundamentally change the idea that "people who study spirituality must have nothing to do with wealth and must be poor." There is no connection whatsoever between the two.

He also emphasizes here: many people firmly believe deep in their hearts that "poverty is more spiritual than abundance." In our ancient times, "An Inscription of a Humble Room"¹⁴ also emphasized this point -- that is, if you want to achieve something, you must go through a process of poverty. So this idea is deeply rooted in our hearts, and especially among us Easterners, Chinese people, and ethnic Chinese, there is this idea: you must start from poverty, and the spoiled children of wealthy families will never achieve anything. If you hold this idea, then you will think that having money cannot be a good thing either.

Or perhaps you believe that you are basically worthless, that you have no value at all. So you use poverty to punish yourself: I am basically worthless, so what would I do with so much money? I do not deserve to have so much money. I am not a great master, nor an artist, singer, sports star, or swimming champion; what virtue or ability do I have to possess such wealth? I do not deserve it. This "I do not deserve it" viewpoint truly exists in subtle, imperceptible ways.

Regarding this issue, there is another book that discusses it -- the one Maslow wrote about human nature, about the basic needs of human beings and what the highest need of human beings is¹⁵. That book says: human beings have a particularly wondrous phenomenon. In the process of reaching your highest achievement, after you have satisfied the most basic needs of human beings and begin to move upward to realize your personal value, at that time a very strange thing will appear -- all human beings have this phenomenon, which is a feeling of not deserving it, feeling that you do not deserve to be this outstanding, do not deserve to be the center of so much attention. What virtue or ability do I have to make thousands upon thousands of people like me? I cannot bear the adoration of thousands upon thousands of people; I cannot withstand it. This idea, whether in the East or the West, is something common to all human beings, a very magical feeling -- after a person has achieved something very great, he will generally enter this state very quickly.

In ancient China, there were sayings such as "virtue not matching one's position," "a thin fate cannot hold down wealth," and "wealth will bring disaster" -- if it is not in your destiny, then when such great wealth comes to you, it will bring many disasters, it is not a good thing, sudden misfortune will occur, something will happen to your family, and so on. Think carefully about these many subtle, imperceptible things from traditional Chinese culture: are they present in your beliefs? Dig carefully and see whether they have been implanted in your inner heart. If they are there, pull them out and throw them away.

What he is saying with all of this is to tell you: when you say you have changed a general belief, but your life still has unpaid bills and is still very tight, at that time you still need to put effort into your inner beliefs, into your personalized beliefs, and continue to dig, to excavate the problems behind those beliefs, and also to create some beliefs that are related to your personalization. More will be introduced on this later.

When you dig into your beliefs, when you want to live a life of abundance -- and this abundance does not refer only to money, but also to emotions, career, and interpersonal relationships in every aspect -- you must add in your own personalized beliefs that fit you, rather than saying broad, sweeping things.

According to your energy, strength, and degree of earnestness, you can also help many people change their beliefs.

It is related to your energy, related to your strength, and related to your degree of earnestness -- the intensity of your desire to change.

In daily physical life, you usually only concern yourself with changing your beliefs about yourself, and then changing the beliefs others hold about you.

First change your beliefs about yourself -- we are generally interested in ourselves -- and then change the beliefs others hold about you.

You will find that there are some mutually conflicting beliefs within you, and you must be thoroughly familiar with these beliefs.

For example: perhaps you believe that you want to understand the nature of the inner self, and you tell yourself that you should remember your dreams, but at the same time you still hold the idea that you are really of no value, that you are worthless, and you are very afraid to remember your dreams.

This sense of worthlessness, of being worthless, of being just one ordinary person among the vast multitude on this boundless earth -- this viewpoint is very harmful, it is a very negative viewpoint, and it will affect many things. As mentioned earlier, it has an influence on your poverty, and here is another one: worthlessness -- these things will all have an influence on you.

Look at Western civilization -- which has been leading the development of the world for the past three hundred years or so -- let us not first discuss whether this scientific development is right or wrong, but just look at its current situation. There is one greatest difference between them and us Easterners: each of them feels that one day in the future he will be one of those chosen ones, one of those chosen people, the person selected by God to save the world; each person is a unique existence, and each person has his own unique value.

So you see in their Western films, it is always an unknown, ordinary common person who in the end goes to save the world. The entire formula of Hollywood blockbusters is basically this one -- an ordinary person, if destiny so arranges, you also have the ability to change the world. Under this large-scale film and television propaganda, under this broad cultural influence, it gives the collective a common belief: each of us is capable, we are unique, we are not without value, and our sense of value is very strong. Through methods similar to hypnosis or suggestion, it continuously gives the entire group, the entire society, a sense of self-achievement. So there is a reason and a logic behind why Hollywood blockbusters can sweep the world.

There you may discover some things you cannot face.

Why are you afraid to enter your dreams? Because you are afraid that in your dreams there are some things you cannot face; you are afraid of the things that can be turned up from the deep unconscious level, and you dare not face them. You are especially afraid that those dark things in the bottom layer of the unconscious will be turned up -- because you previously believed that those things were bad, and that is why they were buried deep inside you, and you dare not face them.

So in this kind of example, you will say: I want to understand myself, but I am afraid I will not like what I find. This is useless. On the one hand you say you want to understand yourself, want to understand your inner self, but on the other hand you are afraid: what if I discover something I do not like? What if I discover that I am actually this kind of person? This is where you are conflicted.

The belief you yourself must change: you must no longer believe that your inner self is a dungeon filled with repulsive, repressed emotions. It does indeed hide some repressed emotions, but it also contains great intuition, knowledge, and the answers to all your questions.

Remember that? All questions -- it is stated very clearly. What you must change is this: no longer believe that your inner self is a dungeon filled with repulsive, dark emotions and repressed emotions, a place where those especially negative emotions that you dare not face, dare not accept, or cannot change are locked away. He says there are indeed some emotions in there that you have repressed, because you often turn a blind eye to them. But at the same time, your inner self also contains many positive things -- much great intuition, intuition that is truly great, because it exists across time and space. And the knowledge from all your lifetimes is also in there, as well as the answers to all your questions -- all of them are in your inner self.

When you talk with friends, listen carefully to what you yourself say, and to what they say; see how you reinforce each other's beliefs, and see how your imaginations operate along the same line.

He is teaching you specifically how to do this. In your actual life, when you chat with friends, you must listen carefully to what you yourself say and what they say, and then you will discover: you are reinforcing each other's beliefs, you are echoing each other. Except for a very small number of people who are always arguing or chatting in the manner of a contrarian, what is a normal person with social skills doing when communicating with others? They are flattering each other, reinforcing each other's beliefs -- and this process of flattering is in fact reinforcing the other person's beliefs.

You often go along with some of your friends' remarks without really thinking them through. When a friend states a viewpoint, a belief, or an event, you often find examples to agree with him. For instance, if your friend says people these days are really no good, and brings up a problem with human nature, you immediately say, right, right, I just saw a news story yesterday, and the news said look at how so-and-so did such-and-such -- this fact of yours serves to corroborate him and reinforce his belief. And when you say something similar, he does the same: he will pull things out of his own database to agree with you and confirm you. You are mutually reinforcing each other's beliefs.

Then you also share a common imagination, and you play it out on the same imaginative level. For example, regarding future developments, you might say that after the pandemic the whole world's economy will be bad, and then you begin to imagine what effect this will have on your industry. Actually, most of this is imagination -- whether the future will be good or bad, you are only making inferences based on present data and information, and you do not really know. What will your friend do at this point? He will use his imagination to fill in the parts you may have missed; he will enrich your imagination and make it fuller and more detailed. This kind of process is reinforcing your belief. So between the two of you, you reinforce both each other's beliefs and each other's imagination.

If you understand that they are obvious, all of this becomes very clear and open.

What was just said is very obvious -- beliefs influence one another, and you are mutually reinforcing each other's beliefs.

In this society, almost everyone has heard this cliched self-suggestion:

Every day, in every way, I am getting better and better.

This sentence is actually the original words of a famous French expert in psychological suggestion.¹⁶ We have seen this kind of inspirational saying in many places. On the surface, that seems like the best suggestion, and it really is a very good suggestion. However, the result of this suggestion still follows the beliefs of your conscious mind.

That is, you must remember: merely having this kind of suggestion is useless; you must change your beliefs. If you do not examine your beliefs, if you do not observe your beliefs, this kind of formula will lead to different results. The example he gives below is meant to prove the above statement.

We have said before, and gave the example of "I was a responsible father or mother" as a belief. If for you this belief means that you spent great effort making sure your children brushed their teeth, ate enough, and behaved properly -- and in China you would also add that they must do well in school -- then you will interpret the suggestion "getting better and better" in that way.

The earlier suggestion "Every day, in every way, I am getting better and better"¹⁷ looks fine on the surface, and there is nothing wrong with the suggestion itself. But this suggestion will definitely follow your beliefs and lead to results in the direction of your beliefs.

For example, suppose you have the belief "I am a responsible parent." This belief itself -- let us not worry for now whether it is positive or negative -- once you have it, you will make it concrete: I spent my time, money, and energy on my children, so that they could live better and study with full effort, and I even spent time accompanying them in their studies and doing homework with them. So when you say "Every day I will get better and better," this "better and better" may mean to you that the children are eating better and better, living better and better, studying better and better, and getting better and better grades -- it will turn in that direction. The "better and better" itself is not wrong, but because of the effect of this belief, it will be steered in the direction of that belief.

If for you this belief means that this is the best way to express your deepest love for your children.

If you feel that expressing love directly is an embarrassing thing, then the suggestion "better and better" may only strengthen that belief. In the past you were not very good at expressing yourself to your children, and you felt embarrassed to say "I love you" or "I like you" to them -- this is especially obvious among Chinese parents. When children are very small, you will say "Baby, I love you," but when they are a little older, you are not so good at expressing it. He expresses all his love for his children through "You must study hard," turning that love into a kind of prodding, a kind of pressure, and he feels this is the best love for his children -- spare the rod and spoil the child, be a tiger mom. He turns his love into this.

So in this case, if you feel your belief is "being a responsible parent," and then "better and better" refers to strengthening this aspect, you may become more and more efficient in that area -- in your communication with your children.

This is why I say that it is extremely important for you to examine your beliefs for yourself, inspect your beliefs, and understand what personal meaning they have for you.

What he emphasizes here is that you must spell out the personal impact of a belief on you; do not just speak in broad, slogan-like beliefs, but speak in specifics.

If you suddenly begin to realize that your position begins to express your love directly to your children -- still using the earlier example -- you may find that they are quite surprised, very pleased, yet also confused. It may take a while before they can understand your behavior.

When you suddenly change from strict discipline of your children into understanding them, communicating with them, and deep spiritual understanding, the children's first feeling is surprise -- because you are finally willing to understand them, and finally not just concerned about whether they brush their teeth, whether they eat well, whether they study well -- and then they are very happy, but really a little confused: has Dad or Mom taken the wrong medicine? This is very normal.

The old reality has a kind of stickiness, and the new one does too.

The reality in which you previously only cared about their material life has stickiness, and when you begin to care about their inner life, this too will have a kind of stickiness. Therefore you must understand and examine your beliefs, realize that they form your experience, and then consciously change those beliefs that do not bring you the results you want.

In making such an examination, you will become aware of many excellent beliefs that are beneficial to you, and then trace them to see how your imagination and emotions follow them.

When you pick out and remove those beliefs that cannot bring you the results you want, you will also discover many excellent and beneficial beliefs. Then trace these good beliefs and see how your imagination and emotions help them and strengthen them.

If possible, look back over your own past for any recognizable new ideas that came to you and powerfully changed your experience.

If you can, look back over the course of your life's development and find the key points in the past -- points where, because you adopted a new belief, a new idea, or a new set of values, your experience and your life were powerfully changed. Find those points, find why you adopted that new viewpoint or idea at the time, find that feeling, find why you adopted such a completely new idea at that moment -- how your emotions, feelings, and imagination helped you at the moment of that decision. Find that feeling, find that method, and then apply it to your present.

Ideas not only often change the world, they also often create the world.

Be sure to remember: it does not just turn some bad things into good things -- it is not only that; what is most important? It also creates. So what he means is, do not only look at the bad parts of your belief system -- changing the bad parts can only help you avoid some things -- but you must discover those good beliefs, those new and meaningful beliefs, because they are what create this world.

Session 623

Wrapping Up Chapter Four

At this point, Chapter Four is nearly finished. The last part of Chapter Four is Session 623, which is also the first part of Chapter Five -- October 25, 1972. At the very end of Chapter Four there are just three sentences:

Let us continue with the discussion of the inner self, your conscious beliefs, and your most intimate physical creation -- your human image.

That is, your physical body, your most intimate material creation -- your physical body is your own material creation. He says we are discussing the relationship among these three -- the next chapter discusses the relationship among your inner self, your conscious beliefs, and your physical body, which is your most immediate physical creation. That is, the relationship among the inner you, the conscious you, and your own physical body.

This chapter ends here. That is all for the content of Chapter Four.

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注释与核实

1. According to Mike's original words, "the human brain has about 100 billion nerve cells, neurons"; upon verification, it should be "the number of neurons in the human brain is about 86 billion (with about 85 billion non-neuronal cells), and '100 billion' is a long-circulated round-number estimate lacking original measurement basis." (Source: Azevedo et al., "Equal numbers of neuronal and nonneuronal cells make the human brain an isometrically scaled-up primate brain," Journal of Comparative Neurology), https://onlinelibrary.wiley.com/doi/10.1002/cne.21974) ↩

2. According to Mike's original words, "50 trillion cells"; upon verification, it should be "the total number of cells in the human body is about 37 trillion (3.72×10^13), not 50 trillion; another revised estimate gives about 30 trillion human cells." (Source: Bianconi et al., "An estimation of the number of cells in the human body" (Annals of Human Biology, https://pubmed.ncbi.nlm.nih.gov/23829164/) ↩ ↩²

3. This claim could not be verified. ↩

4. This claim could not be verified. ↩

5. This claim could not be verified. ↩

6. This claim could not be verified. ↩

7. Source: Encyclopedia of Occultism and Parapsychology (Gale), "Roberts, Jane -1984)" (https://www.encyclopedia.com/science/encyclopedias-almanacs-transcripts-and-maps/roberts-jane-1929-1984) ↩

8. This claim could not be verified. ↩

9. Source: W. V. Harris, "Child-Exposure in the Roman Empire" (https://doi.org/10.2307/300867) ↩

10. This claim could not be verified. ↩

11. This claim could not be verified. ↩

12. Source: Encyclopaedia Britannica, "Industrial Revolution" (https://www.britannica.com/event/Industrial-Revolution) ↩

13. Source: Encyclopaedia Britannica, "Dmitri Mendeleev | Biography, Periodic Table, & Facts" (https://www.britannica.com/biography/Dmitri-Mendeleev) ↩

14. Source: Wikipedia, "Liu Yuxi" (https://zh.wikipedia.org/zh-hans/%E5%88%98%E7%A6%B9%E9%94%A1) ↩

15. Source: Encyclopaedia Britannica, "Self-actualization" (https://www.britannica.com/science/self-actualization) ↩

16. Source: Encyclopaedia Britannica, "Émile Coué | Self-Help, Autosuggestion, Psychotherapy" (https://www.britannica.com/biography/Emile-Coue) ↩

17. Source: Encyclopaedia Britannica, "Émile Coué" (https://www.britannica.com/biography/Emile-Coue) ↩