Seth: Backstabbing Explained and Remedied

Seth, The Nature of Personal Reality, Session 622, Page 77

When someone who has been ill starts on the road to recovery through changing his beliefs, he may be quite surprised to find even his dearest allies suddenly upset, reminding him of the “reality” of his dire state for the same reasons.

Because beliefs form reality - the structure of experience - any change in beliefs altering that structure initiates change to some extent, of course. The status quo which served a certain purpose is gone, new exercises are introduced, another creative process begins. Because your private beliefs are shared with others, because there is interaction, then any determined change of direction on your part is felt by others, and they will react in their own fashion.

You are setting out to experience the most fulfilled reality that you can. To do this you have, hopefully, begun to examine your beliefs. You may want others to change. In doing so you begin with yourself. I told you (in the 619th session) to imagine a game in which you see yourself acting in line with the new desired belief. As you do so, see yourself affecting others in the new fashion.

See them reacting to you in the new way. This is highly important because telepathically you are sending them interior messages. You are telling them that you are changing the conditions and behavior of your relationship. You are broadcasting your altered position.

Some will be quite able to understand you at that level. There may be those who need the old framework, and someone, if not you, to play the part you played before. Those people will either drop out of your experience or you must drop them from yours.

Once more, if you think of daily life as an ever-moving three-dimensional painting with you as the artist, then you will realize that as your beliefs change so will your experience. You must accept the idea completely, however, that your beliefs form your experience. Discard those beliefs that are not bringing you those effects you want. In the meantime you will often be in the position of telling yourself that something is true in the face of physical data that seems completely contradictory. You may say, “I live amid abundance and am free from want,” while your eyes tell you that the desk is piled with bills. You must realize that you are the one who produced that “physical evidence” that still faces you, and you did so through your beliefs.

So as you alter the belief, the physical evidence will gradually begin to “prove” your new belief as faithfully as it did your old one. You must work with your own ideas. While there are general categories of beliefs, and general reasons for them, you must become personally aware of your own, for no one person is completely like any other. The old beliefs served a purpose and fulfilled a need.

Seth Exercise: Changing Beliefs using Emotion and Imagination

Your emotions and your imagination both follow your belief. When the belief vanishes then the same emotional context is no longer entertained, and your imagination turns in other directions. Beliefs automatically mobilize your emotional and imaginative powers.

Few beliefs are intellectual alone. When you are examining the contents of your conscious mind, you must learn, or recognize, the emotional and imaginative connotations that are connected with a given idea. There are various ways of altering the belief by substituting its opposite. One particular method is three-pronged. You generate the emotion opposite the one that arises from the belief you want to change, and you turn your imagination in the opposite direction from the one dictated by the belief. At the same time you consciously assure yourself that the unsatisfactory belief is an idea about reality and not an aspect of reality itself.

You realize that ideas are not stationary. Emotions and imagination move them in one direction or the other, reinforce them or negate them.

Quite deliberately you use your conscious mind playfully, creating a game as children do, in which for a time you completely ignore what seems to be in physical terms and ‘pretend’ that what you really want is real.

If you are poor, you purposely pretend that you have all you need financially. Imagine how you will spend your money. If you are ill, imagine playfully that you are cured. See yourself doing what you would do. If you cannot communicate with others, imagine yourself doing so easily. If you feel your days dark and pointless, then imagine them filled and joyful.

Now this may sound impractical, yet in your daily life you use your imagination and your emotions often at the service of far less worthy beliefs; and the results are quite clear - and let me add, unfortunately practical.

As it took a while for the unsatisfactory beliefs to become materialized, so it may be a time before you see physical results; but the new ideas will take growth and change your experience as certainly as the old ones did. The process of imagining will also bring you face to face with other subsidiary ideas that may momentarily bring you up short. You may see where you held two quite conflicting ideas simultaneously, and with equal vigor. In such a case, you stalemated yourself.

Seth, NOPR, Session 622, Page 63

Seth's Process to Discover Your Beliefs

There are two ways to get at your own conscious beliefs. The most direct is to have a series of talks with yourself. Write down your beliefs in a variety of areas, and you will find that you believe different things at different times. Often there will be contradictions readily apparent. These represent opposing beliefs that regulate your emotions, your bodily condition and your physical experience. Examine the conflicts. Invisible beliefs will appear that unite those seemingly diverse attitudes. Invisible beliefs are simply those of which you are fully aware but prefer to ignore, because they represent areas of strife which you have not been willing to handle thus far. They are quite available once you are determined to examine the complete contents of your conscious mind.

If this strikes you as too intellectual a method, then you can also work backward from your emotions to your beliefs. In any case, regardless of which method you choose, one will lead you to the other. Both approaches require honesty with yourself, and a firm encounter with the mental, psychic and emotional aspects of your current reality.

As with Andrea, you must accept the validity of your feelings while realizing that they are about certain issues or conditions, and are not necessarily factual statements of your reality. ‘I feel that I am a poor mother,’ or, ‘I feel that I am a failure.’ These are emotional statements and should be accepted as such. You are to understand, however, that while the feelings have their own integrity as emotions, they may not be statements of fact. You might be an excellent mother while feeling that you are very inadequate. You may be most successful in reaching your goals while still thinking yourself a failure.

By recognizing these differences and honestly following the feelings through - in other words, by riding the emotions - you will be led to the beliefs behind them. A series of self-revelations will inevitably result, each leading you to further creative psychological activity. At each stage you will be closer to the reality of your experience than you have ever been.

The conscious mind will benefit greatly as it becomes more and more aware of its directing influence upon events. It will no longer fear the emotions, or the body, as threatening or unpredictable, but sense the greater unity in which it is involved.

Seth, NOPR, Session 644, p. 213

Blogger's Note: After a few weeks of doing the hypnosis exercise to change a deeply-rooted belief, I awoke one morning with a perfectly delineated nest of beliefs on the subject. I wrote them down and chose the most emotionally charged ones with which to work directly.

Abe Classic: Belief Changing Process

Abraham: Here is the process, we can offer it to you in 30seconds. 

Make a statement of desire “I WANT” and what that automatically does is pinpoint the particle that you are going to make bigger. It might already be big and it might just be a particle but that identifies what you want and it also alerts your guidance system. Two very important functions.Now that your guidance system is alerted, anything that is within you or anything that will come to you, that is not now in harmony with what you have said I WANT - you will be notified of it. As you are notified of it then you can simply release that thought from your experience by focusing again upon what you want. That is the way you bridge or alter your beliefs.

You say I WANT. That turns on your guidance system and as you move through life experience, you are sensitive to the way you feel negative emotion, you pinpoint the conflict, you focus again upon what you want and the conflict goes away. That is the process for bridging beliefs or for changing the clump of thoughts within you so that they all go together well until eventually you come to believe that which you are wanting to believe, you see. 

Now, does that worry you?
There are those who that would worry. They’d say, “Abraham!! You're talking about changing beliefs!! Do we really have the right to alter those beliefs, are they not beliefs that have been carved in granite or carved and set out for all to follow?” 

No!! They are not!!

Blogger note: This is some older Abe from one of the first books. I like digging back in the earlier books sometimes because the approach is just slightly different. Here they detail a process of working through it as it comes up which can be a lot easier said than done. I've really gotten a case of emotional whiplash in these situations which is why I'm combining my current work with the Seth hypnosis exercise which is a long hault, but can be more gentle with thorny issues. However, this Abe approach is good to keep in mind throughout the day as you work out a few knots piece by piece.

Abe: Changing Beliefs

Belief is only a habit of thought. So the big question MIGHT be ‘how do I change my habit of thought?’ And we say the only way we KNOW that will inspire you to change your habit of thought is when you finally HEAR us and really GET it when we say: the way you feel is dependent upon what you are choosing.

And when you really mean it when you say nothing is more important than that I FEEL good, then those habits will change very quickly. But as long as you are willing to do as your elders taught you and buck up, keep a stiff upper lip and tolerate the negative emotions, then there is not much likelihood that you are going to change your beliefs.

Note from your sethabequotes blogger: I'll be exploring differing approaches to changing root beliefs this week. Abe's approach is a little more lighthearted than Seth's and works for me in more superficial areas. I have a particularly stubborn belief I am currently trying to budge, and I think Seth's approach (which I will be blogging as the week goes on) has a better chance of changing it on a deeper level. I've been at it about two weeks using the hypnosis exercises. The effect I observe so far can be likened to applying a product which slowly dissolves layers of rust away on a frozen bolt so it can turn again. 

Seth: Additional background on Hypnosis

Good evening.

Dictation:  Natural hypnosis is the acquiescence of the unconscious to conscious belief. In periods of concentrated focus, with all distractions cut out, the desired ideas are then implanted (in formal hypnosis).  the same processes occurs in normal life, however; areas of primary concentration then regulate your experience both biologically and mentally, and generate similar conditions.

Let us give a simple example, using a positive belief instilled in childhood. An individual is told that he is comely, well proportioned, and possesses a likeable personality. The idea takes hold. Their persona acts in line with this belief in all ways but also a variety of subsidiary beliefs grow up about the main one.

The belief in personal worth draws about it the belief in the personal value of others, for they show their best faces to our fortunate friend.  His life constantly reinforces this concept, and while he is peripherally aware that some people are “nicer” than others, his main intimate experience allows him to see the best in others and in himself.  This becomes one of the strong frameworks through which he views his existence.

Data or stimuli that does not agree is a side issue, not personally applicable, but present, he realizes, as a fact for others. He will not need to prove himself, so it will be easier for him to accept contemporaries with fairness.

There may be areas in which he realizes he is not adequate, yet because of his belief in his basic worth he will be able to accept these lacks as a part of himself without feeling threatened by them. He will be able to try to improve his condition without knocking himself down at the same time.

Now: In those terms he may or may not be as attractive, feature by feature, as some other individuals who believe, in fact, that they are unattractive. The belief in his own comeliness is so important that others will react to him in the same fashion. An individual can have great native beauty , for example but this beauty is not apparent to others, or to the individual.

In other areas an individual who thinks that he is poor will lose or misuse, or badly invest, andy amount of money, whether he works hard for it or is given it. A person who has hypnotized himself into a state of loneliness will be desolate although surrounded by a hundred friends and admirers.

What does all of this mean to you in your daily life, and how can you utilize natural hypnosis to better your experience? (See Seth Classic: Natural Hypnosis Exercise)

Seth, NOPR, p 322

Seth Classic: Natural Hypnosis Exercise

In those areas in which you are dissatisfied, you feel that you are powerless, or that your will is paralyzed, or that conditions continue despite what you think of as your intent. Yet if you pay attention to your own quite conscious thoughts, you will find that you are concentrating upon precisely those negative aspects that so appall you. You are hypnotizing yourself quite effectively and so reinforcing the situation. You may say, horrified, ‘What can I do? I am hypnotizing myself into my overweight condition (or my loneliness, or my poor health).’ Yet in other facets of your life you may be hypnotizing yourself into wealth, accomplishment, satisfaction - and here you do not complain. The same issues are involved. The same principles are operating. In those positive life situations you are certain of your initiative. There is no doubt. Your beliefs become reality.

In the unsatisfactory aspects, you must understand this: there is also no doubt. You are utterly convinced that you are sick, or poor, or lonely, or spiritually opaque, or unhappy.

The results, then, as easily and effortlessly follow. Natural hypnosis, in the terms given here, operates as well in one case as in the other.

What should you do, then? First of all, you must realize that you are the hypnotist. You must seize the initiative here as you have in other positive aspects of your life. Whatever the superficial reasons for your beliefs, you must say:

For a certain amount of time I will momentarily suspend what I believe in this area, and willfully accept the belief I want. I will pretend that I am under hypnosis, with myself as hypnotist and subject. For that time desire and belief will be one. There will be no conflict because I do this willingly. For this period I will completely alter my old beliefs. Even though I sit quietly, in my mind I will act as if the belief I want were mine completely.

At this point do not think of the future, but only of the present. If you are overweight, insert the weight that you think is ideal for you while you are following this exercise. Imagine that you are healthy if you have the belief that you are not. If you are lonely, believe that you are filled with the feeling of companionship instead. Realize that you are exerting your initiative to imagine such situations. Here there can be no comparison with your normal situation. Use visual data, or words - whatever is most natural to you. And again, no more than ten minutes is required.

If you do this faithfully, within a month you will find the new conditions materializing in your experience. Your neurological structure will respond automatically. The unconscious will be aroused, bringing its great powers to bear, bringing you the new results. Do not try to overdo this, to go through the entire day worrying about beliefs, for example. This can only cause you to contrast what you have with what you want. Forget the exercise when it is completed. You will find yourself with impulses that arrive in line with these newly inserted beliefs, and then it is up to you to act on these and not ignore them.

The initiative must be yours. You will never know unless you try the exercise. Now if you are in poor health, and have a physician, you had better continue going to him, because you still rely on that system of belief - but use these exercises as supplements to build up your own sense of inner health, and to protect you against any negative suggestions given by your doctor. Utilize the belief in physicians since you have it.

 

Seth, Nature of Personal Reality, Session 658, Page 315

Seth Classic: Which You, Which World, Probable You's

Any of those directions, followed, can enrich the existence that you know, and in turn open up other probabilities that now escape you. The main image of yourself that you have held has, to a large extent, also closed your mind to these to other probable interests and identifications. If you think in terms of a multidimensional self, then you will realize that you have many more avenues open to expression and fulfillment than you have been using. These probable achievements will lie latent unless you consciously decide to bring them into being.

Whatever talents you sense you have can be developed only if you determine to do so. The simple act of decision will then activate the unconscious mechanisms. You, as a personality, regardless of your health, wealth or circumstances, have a rich variety of probable experience from which to choose. Consciously you must realize this and seize the direction for your own life. Even if you say, “I will go along with all life offers, “ you are making a conscious decision. If you say, “I am powerless to direct my life,” you are also making a deliberate choice—and in that case a limiting one.

The path of experience is nowhere settled. There is no one road that does no have avenues to another. There are deep veins of probable actions ever available to you at any given time. Your imaginations can be of great value, allowing you to open yourself to such courses; you can then you it to help you bring these into being.

If you are poor, you chose that reality from many probable ones that did not involve poverty—and that are still open. If you chose illness, again there is a probable reality ready for initiation in which you choose health. If you are lonely there are probable friends you refused to meet in the past, but who are readily available.

In your mind, therefore, see those probable abilities or events taking place. As you do, the intensity of your desire brings them into your experience. There are no boundaries, again, set about the self. There are literally many other probable you’s. You can draw upon their abilities, as in their own way they call upon your own, for you are all intimately connected.

You must realize that you are indeed a probable you. Your experience is the result of beliefs. Your neuronal structure necessitates a certain focus so that other experiences counter to your conscious assumptions remain probable or latent. Alter the beliefs and any probable self can, within certain limitations, be actualized.

*****

What you must understand is this: Each of the events in each of your lives was “once” probable. From a given field of action, then, you choose those happenings that will be physically materialized.

This operates in individual and mass terms. Suppose that today your home was robbed. Yesterday, the theft was one of innumerable probable events. I chose such an example because more than one person would have to be involved—the victim and the robber. Why was your home ransacked, and not your neighbor’s? In one way or another, through your conscious thought you attracted such an event, and drew it from probability into actuality. The occurrence would be an accumulation of energy—turned into action—and be brought about by corollary beliefs.

You many be convinced that human nature is evil, or that no one is safe from another’s aggression, or that people are motivated mainly by greed. Such beliefs attract their own reality, If you have anything worth losing, you are then automatically convinced that someone else will take it from you, or try their hardest to do so. In your own way you send out messages to just such a person. On basic levels your convictions will be quite similar, but one will see himself as the victim and one as the aggressor—that is, each of you will react differently to the same set of beliefs. However the two of you are necessary if a crime of that nature is, or is to be, committed.

The beliefs of both of you find justification in physical life, and only reinforce themselves. The fear of robbers attracts robbers. If you think that men are evil, however, you are often not able to examine that as a belief, but take it as a condition of reality.

All of your present experience was drawn from probable reality. During your life, any event must come through your creaturehood, with the built-in time recognition that is so largely a part of your neurological structure; so usually there is a lag, a lapse in time, during which your beliefs cause material actualization. When you try to change your convictions in order to change your experience, you also have to first stop the momentum that you have already built up, so to speak. You are changing the messages while the body is used to reacting smoothly, unquestioningly, to a certain set of beliefs.

There is a steady even flow in which conscious activity through the neurological structure brings about events, and a familiar pattern of reaction is established. When you alter these conscious beliefs through effort, then a period of time is necessary while the structure learns to adjust to the new preferred situation. If beliefs are changed overnight, comparatively less time is required.

In a manner of speaking each belief can be seen as a powerful station, pulling to it from fields of probabilities only those signals to which it is attuned, and blocking out all others. When you set up a new station there may be some static or bleed through from an old one for a while.
Any ability you have, then can be “brought in more clearly,” amplified, and become practical rather than probable. But in such a case you must concentrate upon the attribute—not, for example, upon the fact that you have not used it well thus far.

Now: And artist produced a body of work in his lifetime. Each painting is but one materialization, one focused presentation, of an endless variety of probable paintings. The actual work involved in the selection of data is still made according to the beliefs in the artist’s conscious mind as to who he is, how good an artist he is, what kind of artist he is , what “school” of artistic beliefs he subscribes to , his ideas of society and his place in it, and esthetic and economic values to name but a few.

The same sort of thing operates in the actualization of any event in which you are involved. You create your life. Inner images are of great importance to the artist. He tries to project them upon his canvas or board. Again, you are each your own artist, and your inner visualizations become models for other situations and events. The artist utilized training and mixes his colors in order to give artistic flesh to his painting. The images in your mind draw to themselves all the proper emotional energy and power needed to fill them out as physical events.

You can change the picture of your life at any time if only you realize that it is simply the one portrait of yourself that you have created from an unlimited amount of probable ones. The peculiar aspect of your own probable portraits will still be characteristic of you, and no other.

The abilities, strengths and variants that you may want to actualize are already latent, in your terms, and at your disposal. Suppose that you are unhealthy and desire health. If you understand the nature of probabilities, you will not need to pretend to ignore your present situation. You will recognize it instead as a probable reality that you have physically materialized. Taking that for granted, you will then begin the process necessary to bring a different probability into physical experience.

You will do this by concentrating upon what you want, but feeling no conflict between that and what you have, because one will not contradict the other; each will be seen as a reflection of belief in daily life. As it took some time to build up your present image with its unhealthy aspects, so it may take time to change that picture. But concentration upon the present unhealthy situation will only prolong it. Period.

Each condition is as real or unreal as the other. Which you? Which world? You have your choice, broadly, within certain frameworks that you have chosen as part of your creaturehood. The past as you think of it, and the subconscious, again as you think of it, have little to do with your present experience outside of your beliefs about them. The past contains for each of you some moments of joy, strength, creativity and splendor, as well as episodes of unhappiness, despair perhaps, turmoil and cruelty. Your present convictions will act like a magnet, activating all such past issues, happy or sad.

Seth, NOPR, Session 656  April 16, 1973

Abe to a Guy Stuck in Mom's Basement

Guest:...I still live at home. And right now, I guess I've been wanting to move out, but I haven't taken the action, or the dream, or the thoughts haven't been there to...

ABRAHAM: Well, you feel like you're in a trap. You're not ready to move out, financially, and yet you feel bad about not moving out. And so, any way you look at it, it closes your valve. When you say, "I'm old enough. I should be out on my own," and your mother says, "You're old enough! You SHOULD be out on your own!" then that's a lackful thought that closes your valve! And yet when you think, "OK. I'll move out tomorrow," and you envision yourself out there living in a cardboard box, that closes your valve, too!

And so, what's happening is you're asking too much of the now. What you're wanting to do is start dreaming about moving out. Start envisioning moving out. Start imagining having your own place. Start imagining maybe having a roommate. Start imagining something that is more pleasing than what-is. And, when you spend more time with the vision of what you want, than you are with the reality of what-is, the reality of what-is will shift to the vision. All sorts of things you cannot right now imagine will begin to happen!

Phoenix, AZ 04-26-94

Seth: Hate, Love, and Reincarnation Part 3

Seth, Seth Speaks, Session 550 cont. - 9/28/70

Seth: Are you following me and this material?

Rob: Sure. Why do you ask?

Seth: You are my first reader.

I would like to make it clear that there is nothing to be gained, either, by hating hatred. You fall into the same trap.

What is needed is a basic trust in the nature of vitality, and faith that all elements of experience are used for a greater good, whether or not you can perceive the way in which “evil “ is transmuted into creativity. What you love will also be part of your experience in this life and others.

The most important idea to be remembered is that no one thrusts the experience of any given lifetime upon you. It is formed faithfully according to your own emotions and beliefs. The great power and energy of love and creativity is apparent in the mere fact of your existence. This is the truth so often forgotten—that[ the combination of] consciousness and existence is continuous and absorbs those elements that seem to you so destructive.

Hate is powerful if you believe it, and yet though you hate life, you will continue to exist. You have made appointments, each of you, that you have forgotten. They were signed, so speak, before you were born in this existence. In many cases the friends that you make were close to you long before you met them in this present life.

This does not mean that everyone in your present acquaintanceship has been known to you, and this certainly does not imply a boring record played over and over again, for each encounter is a new one in its own way. Remembering what I said about families, realize also that towns and villages may also be composed of the past inhabitants of other such towns and villages, transposed with new experiences and backgrounds, as the group tries different experiments.

Now sometimes, there are also such variations in that the inhabitants of a particular town now may be the reborn inhabitants of those who lived, say, in 1632 in a small Irish village. They may be transposed to a town in Idaho.

Some who wanted to travel from the Old World to the New, may be born in the new one. You must remember also that abilities from past lives are at your disposal for your present use. Your reap your own rewards. Information concerning these is often given to you in the sleep state, and there is a kind of gestalt type of dream, a root dream, by which those who know each other in past lives now communicate.

In such dreams, general mass-information is given, that the individuals then use as they desire. Overall plans for development are made as the group members, say, of a town decide upon its destiny. Some individuals always choose to be born as part of some group—reborn, in other words, with past contemporaries, while others, disdaining such endeavors, return in much more isolated positions.

This is a matter of psychological feeling. Some individuals are more ease, more assured, and more capable working with others in this case. You could consider an analogy in which John Doe follows his kindergarten class all the way through high school. In a reincarnational situation, he would always choose to return with his associates. Others, however, would rather skip from school to school, appearing alone relatively speaking, with greater freedom, more challenge, but without the comforting framework of security chosen by the others.

In each case the individual is the judge, not only to each succeeding life, it’s time, the environment, and historical date, but also of its overall character and methods of accomplishment. There are as many different ways to reincarnate, therefore, as there are inner selves, and each inner self will choose its own characteristic methods.

I will end our session now that the chapters is begun. I have the feeling that we will have some extra sessions in any case.

Now: Give me a moment here. First of all, as a species, in the context of normal usage, you have considered yourselves as apart from rest of nature and consciousness.

Your own survival as a species was your main concern. You considered the other species only in the light of their use to you. You did not have a true conception of the great sacredness of all consciousness, nor of your relationship with it. You are losing your grasp of that great truth.

In the present circumstances you are carrying that idea forward -of species’ survival regardless of the consequences, the idea of changing the environment to suit your own purposes; and this has led you to a disregard of spiritual truths.

In physical reality, therefore, you are seeing the results. Now those personalities who are returning are doing so for various reasons. Some of them are drawn to physical life again because of these attitudes. They are those who in the past, in your terms, strove for physical existence without consideration for the rights of other species. The are driven to return because of their own desires.

The species must learn the value of the individual man. The species is also learning its dependence upon other species, and beginning to comprehend its part in the whole framework in physical reality.

Now: some individuals are being reborn at this time simply to help you understand. They are forcing the issue, and forcing the crisis, for you still have time to change your ways. You are working on two main problems, but both involve the sacredness of the individual, and the individual’s relationship with others and with all physically orientated consciousness.

The problem of War will sooner or later teach you that when you kill another man, basically you will end up killing yourself. The overpopulation problem will teach you if you do not have the loving concern for the environment in which you dwell, it will no longer sustain you—you will not be worthy of it. You will not be destroying the planet, you see. You will not be destroying the birds or the flowers, or the grain or the animals. You will not be worthy of them, and they will be destroying you.

You have set up the problem for yourselves within the framework of your reference. You will not understand your part within the framework of nature until you actually see yourselves in danger of tearing it apart. You will not destroy consciousness. You will not annihilate consciousness of even one leaf, but in your context, if the problem were not solved, these would fade from your experience.

The crisis is a kind of therapy, however. It is a teaching method that you have set up for yourselves because you need it. And you need it now, before your species embarks upon journeys to other physical realities. You must learn your lessons now in your own backyard before you travel to other worlds. So you have brought this upon yourself for that purpose and you will learn.

Seth: Hate, Love, and Reincarnation Part 2

Seth, Seth Speaks, Session 550 cont. - 9/28/70

I spoke earlier of rigid concepts of right and wrong. There is only one way to avoid this problem. Only true compassion and love will lead to an understanding of the nature of good, and only these qualities will serve to annihilate the erroneous and distortive concepts of evil.

The simple fact is that as long as you believe in the concept of evil, it is a reality in your system, and you will always find it manifested. Your belief in it will, therefore, seem highly justified. If you carry this concept through succeeding generations, through reincarnations, then you add to its reality.

Let me try to throw some light upon what I am trying to tell you. First of all, love always involves freedom. If a man says he loves you and yet denies to your freedom, then you often hate him. Yet because of his words you do not feel justified in the emotion. This sort of emotional tangle itself can lead to continued entanglement’s through various lives.

If you hate evil, then be aware of your conception of the word. Hate is restrictive. It narrows down your perception. It is indeed a dark glass that shadows all of your experience. You will find more and more to hate, and bring the hated elements into your own experience

Now: If, for example, you hate a parent, then it becomes quite easy to hate any parents, for in their faces you see and project the original offender. In subsequent lives you may also be drawn into a family and find yourself with the same emotions, for the emotions are the problem, and not those elements that seem to bring them about.

If you hate illness you may bring upon yourself a succeeding life of illness, because the hate has drawn it to you.

Now: If you expand your sense of love, of health, and existence, then you are drawn into this life and in others towards those qualities; again, because they are those upon which you concentrate. A generation that hates war will not bring peace. It generation that loves peace will bring peace.

To die with hatred for any cause or people, or for any reason, is a great disadvantage. You will have all kinds of opportunities now to recreate your personal experience in more beneficial ways, to change your world.

In the next life you will be working with those attitudes that are now yours. If you insist upon harboring hatreds within you now, you are very likely to continue doing so. On the other hand, those sparks of truth, intuition, love, joy, creativity, accomplishments gained now, will work for you then as they do now.

They are, you see, the only true realities. They are the only real foundations of existence. It is foolish, as Rupert once said, to hate a storm or Shake your fist at it and call it names. You laugh if you think of children or natives in such activities. It is useless to personify a storm and treated it as a demon, focusing upon its destructive elements, or those elements that to you appear destructive.

Change of form is not destructive. The explosive energy of the storm is highly creative. Consciousness is not annihilated. A storm is part of creativity. You view it from your own perspective, and yet one individual will feel within the storm the unending cycle of creativity, and another will personify it as the work of the devil.

Through all your lives you will interpret the reality that you see in your own way, and that way and will have its effects upon you, and in turn upon others. The man who literally hates, immediately sets himself up in this fashion: He prejudges the nature of reality according to his own limited understanding.

Now I’m emphasizing the issue of hate in this chapter on reincarnation because its results can be so disastrous. A man who hates always believes himself justified. He never hates anything that he believes to be good. He thinks he is being just, therefore, in his hatred, but the hatred itself forms a very strong claim that will follow him throughout his lives, until he learns that only the hatred itself is the destroyer.

You may take a break.  (cont. in next post)

Seth: Hate, Love, and Reincarnation Part 1

Seth, Seth Speaks, Session 550 - 9/28/70

Now: Throughout your reincarnational existences you expand your consciousness, your ideas, your perceptions, your values. You break away from self-adapted restrictions, and you grow spiritually as you learn to step aside from limiting conceptions and dogmas.

Your rate of learning depends entirely upon you, however. Limited, dogmatic, or rigid concepts of good and evil can hold you back. To narrow ideas of the nature of existence can follow you through several lives if you do not choose to be spiritually and psychically flexible.

These rigid ideas can indeed act as leashes, so that you are forced to circle like a tied puppy dog about a very small radius. In such cases through perhaps a group of existences, you will find yourself battling against ideas of good and evil running about in a circle of confusion, doubt, and anxiety.

Your friends and acquaintances will be concerned with the same problems, for you will draw to yourself those with the same concerns. I am telling you again, therefore, that many of your ideas of good and evil are highly distorted and shadow all understanding you have of the nature of reality.

If you form a guilt in your mind, then it is a reality for you, and you must work it out. But many of you form guilts for which there is no adequate cause, and you saddle yourselves with these guilts without reason. In your dimension of activity there appears to be a wild assortment of evils. Let me tell you that he who hates an evil merely creates another one.

Now: From within your point of reference it is often difficult for you perceive that all events work toward creativity, or to trust in the spontaneous creativity of your own natures. Within your system, to kill is obviously is obviously a moral crime, but to kill another in punishment only compounds the original error. Someone very well-known who established a church-if you will, a civilization-once said, “turn the other cheek if you are attacked. “The original meaning of that remark, however, should be understood. You should turn the other cheek because you realize that basically the attacker only attacks himself.

Then you are free, and the reaction is a good one. If you turned the other cheek without this understanding, however, and feel resentful, or if you turn the other cheek out of the feeling of pseudo moral superiority, then the reaction is far from adequate.

Now all of this can be applied to your relationships in your reincarnational existences, and of course it also is highly pertinent to your current daily experience. If you hate another person, that hate may bind you to him through as many lives as you allow the hate to consume you. You draw to yourself in this existence and in all others those qualities upon which you concentrate your attention. If you vividly concern yourself with the injustices you feel have been done to you, then you attract more such experience, and if this goes on, then it will be mirrored in your next existence. It is true that in between lives there is “time “for understanding and contemplation.

Those who do not taken advantage of such opportunities in this life often do not do so when it is over. Consciousness will expand. It will create. It will turn itself inside out to do so. There is nothing outside of yourself that will force you to understand these issues or face them.

It is useless then to say, “When this life is over I will look back upon my experience and mend my ways.” This is like a young man saying, “When I grow old and retire, I will use all those abilities that I am not now developing." You are setting the stage for your “next” life now. The thoughts you think today will in one way or another become the fabric of your next existence. There are no magic words that make you wise, that will fill you with understanding and compassion; that will expand your consciousness.

Your thoughts and everyday experience contain the answers. Any success in this life, any abilities, have been worked out through past experience. They are yours by right. You worked to develop them. If you look about you and your relatives, friends, acquaintances, and business associates, you will also see what kind of person you are, for your drawn to them as they are drawn to you, through very basic inner similarities.

If you examine your thoughts for five minutes at various times during the day for several times a month, you will indeed receive a correct impression of the kind of life you have arranged for yourself in the next existence. If you are not pleased with what you discover, then you had better begin changing the nature of your thoughts and feelings.

As you will see later in this book, you can do so. There is no rule saying that in each life you must meet again those whom you have known before; and yet through the nature of attraction, that is often the case….

You may be born into your present family for many reasons. You may find after death a much stronger relationship emotionally with a personality from a past life. If you’re married, for example, and have no true rapport with your mate, you may instead find a past wife or husband waiting for you.

Often times members of various groups—military groups, church groups, hunting groups, will in another life form family relationships in which they will then work out old problems in new ways. Families must be considered as the gestalts of psychic activity; they have a subjective identity, of which no particular member of the group may be aware.

Families have subconscious purposes, though the individual members of the family may pursue these goals without conscious awareness. Such groups are set up ahead of time, so speak, in between physical existences. Often times four five individuals will set themselves a given challenge, and assign to the various members different parts to play. Then in a physical existence roles will be worked out.

The inner self is always aware of the hidden mechanisms of these family gestalts. Those who of been closely bound through emotional ties often prefer to remain in a closely tied or loosely tied physical relationships that continue through many lifetimes. New relationships are always encouraged however, for you can have ingrown reincarnational “families.” Many of these form physical organizations that are actually manifestations of inner groupings. (cont. in next post)

Abe on Sexual Chemistry

Questioner: When you are tuned in, tapped in, turned on and you’re in a room with others who are also tuned in, tapped in, turned on, but you aren’t attracted sexually, that sexual chemistry with every single person. And I was wondering what is it that evokes it from say, this person and not that person?

Abraham: Well, you have to remember that you have put your vibrational escrow together very intimately with a tremendous amount of detail over a long period of time. So, as you synthesize life, your preferences are honed. Your personal preferences are honed so when you come into vibrational alignment with those carefully honed preferences - everyone in the room doesn’t match the data you’ve been gathering and the conclusions you’ve come to, you see.

But there is, think about the word, attractive. That person is attractive. When you see someone you feel that way about, almost without exception, they are tuned in, tapped in, turned on. They are full of themselves. They are flowing with the fullness of who they are. And that’s attractive when you’re there.

But if they’re tuned in, tapped in, turned on and you’re complaining about something, you would not feel that way about them. And so the attraction that you feel has to do with where you are and where they are.

But we’re talking about attraction on a whole other level. We’re talking tending to your business of being lined up with who you are before you take your first step in attracting others to play with you. If you’ve taken the time to tune yourself to the vibration that is really you before you begin to play in your sexual games, or before you begin to play in your business games or your basketball games or whatever games you’re playing. If you’ve tended to your business of alignment first, then a whole different level of others will come to play with you, you see.

Questioner: Okay.

Abraham: And if you’ve taken the time to tune in to who you are - so that is the consistent vibration you are offering - Law of attraction won’t match you up with those who have not also taken the time to tune in. And when people get together who have taken the time to tune in, that’s when what you create is not only delicious and satisfying beyond description. That is when the world stands back in amazement at what you are able to achieve.

Abraham in San Antonio 11-17-07

Seth: Mankind is One Race

Seth, The Unknown Reality, Vol. 1, Session 697

If a portion of the RACE is hurt it may take a while before ‘you’ feel the pain, but the entire unconscious mechanism of the species will try to heal the wound. Consciously you can facilitate that development, and admit your brotherhood with all other living beings. The healing will take place far quicker if you do. A biological brotherhood exists, an inner empathy on cellular levels, connecting all individuals of the species with one another. This is the result of a biological idealization. It exists in all species, and CONNECTS all species.

The race suffers when any of its members die of starvation or disease, even as a whole plant suffers if a group of its leaves are ‘unhappy’. In the same way all members of the species are benefited by the happiness, health, and fulfillment of any of those individuals who compose it. Man can be aware of the vast medium of probabilities in which he exists, and therefore consciously choose those best suited to those idealizations that point toward his greatest fulfillment. One part of the species cannot grow or develop at the expense of the other portions for very long.

© Rob and Laurel Butts

ACIM Perspective on Leadership and Mass Projections

A change of pace. I don't usually deal with ACIM here, but I'm making an exception for these takes on the theme of Leadership:

“If you make me your authority,”

said the Master to a starry-eyed disciple,

“you harm yourself because you refuse to see things for yourself.”

“And you harm me too,

because you refuse to see me

as I am.” 

Anthony de Mello, SJ

This is a phenomenon all leaders recognize—the pain of not being seen as they truly are. They become a projection screen for resentment of the despised traits that followers don’t want to acknowledge in themselves; and for the qualities of grace and divinity that followers also don’t want to claim in themselves.

I cringe to think of how it would feel to be President. Half the country hates him with a hot vitriol and sends curses his way regularly. No doubt he receives them and feels the effects, whether or not he reads the newspapers. The other half thinks of him as far better than he is, a paragon of courage, compassion, and vision that has never been evident in his personality in the past. Those projected qualities are the very qualities that have been disowned by those who want their leader to be what they, themselves, dare not to be.

Either way, the President is in an unenviable position.  Few—and I include myself in this—see him as he truly is, a flawed human with a fearful ego and a Divine and perfect Self, doing the best he can under the burden of the constant heavy storm of the projections of the world.

Leaders as projection screens can be useful for us, if we’re willing to do the work of taking back our projections and looking at them as disowned parts of ourselves. Right now the country is so polarized that we probably only have to take back our negative projections or our positive projections—in the case of the President, we probably don’t have both. It’s not a pretty picture. 

If you don’t see the President as courageous, compassionate, and visionary, then think of someone you do see that way. That person is who you are, or who you are becoming. You wouldn’t see those qualities if they didn’t already exist in you. Is it possible you can acknowledge those qualities in yourself, and give the admired person a break? Admiration is a heavy burden.

“Seek not outside yourself. For it will fail, and you will weep each time an idol falls.” (T-#573/617-29.VII.1)

Whoever we insist on putting on a pedestal will inevitably fall off. Then we weep, we feel betrayed, we feel abandoned, we lose faith in our ability to judge who is worthy of a pedestal. You are worthy of a pedestal! Not the kind that puts you above others for them to worship and/or hate, but the pedestal you have always previously reserved for those you see as better, more capable, more spiritual, more accomplished, more successful…in other words, “the one you gave the leader’s role.”

“You hate the one you gave the leader’s role when you would have it, and you hate as well his not assuming it at times you want to let the follower in you arise, and give away the role of leadership. And this is what you made your brother for, and learned to think that this his purpose is. Unless he serves it, he has not fulfilled the function that was given him by you. And thus he merits death, because he has no purpose and no usefulness to you.” (T-#603/649-31.II.4)

Perhaps it’s time each of us took back the leader’s role and let our brothers and sisters fulfill the function given to them by God, rather than the one we give them. Perhaps it’s time we accept our true function.

Salvation is my only function here. 

My function here is to forgive the world for all the errors I have made. For thus am I released from them with all the world.

(ACIM W- #204/208-pI.rIII.115.1)

( I don't remember where I found this. It was off the internet, around 2004, probably off an ACIM site. If you know, contact me so I can make proper attribution.)

Classic Abraham on Leadership and Group Dynamics

Abraham: The value of group dynamics is that when you gather together as two or more, and you focus singularly or purely upon desire, there is a compounding of the energy that makes the speed of the creation more dynamic. The disadvantage of coming together as a group is that you bring more of your baggage of observation with you and as a group then you tend to observe each other.

What goes wrong with most groups is you often find yourselves watching each other and critiquing. In other words, when you find yourself in vibrational harmony with your group desire, but you see someone else not vibrating with it, the tendency is to try and fix that one to bring that one back into alignment.

And so the guideline that we would give any group that is working toward any common end is you have great value in your numbers because there is always more to observe what is working than what isn’t working, but it requires understanding how you feel. In other words, we see groups come together and dynamically create and dynamically self-destruct. Group dynamics is a magnifying glass you are shining on things.

Quite often we will see someone in a group dynamic with a Vision. And as they get together in this Vision, the Vision is still imagery. It’s all visionary in the beginning. They are creating in their minds something big and wonderful. And as they focus and get excited and flow energy the universe responds and before they know it they start having physical breakthroughs where they actually find themselves working on this project.

Now the key thing to do is to stay in the visionary mode. The tendency however, is to try and start managing the project. And so they were visionaries, and then they become managers and sort of muck around in the physical sense, and then they lose their group dynamics; they lose their connection to the energy.

And so the encouragement that we would give you, is in your individual or group creating is once you begin the vision you must always be willing to stay primarily in the visionary mode. It’s a temptation to get into the physical and start managing it. To start orchestrating it, and paying attention to how it’s going and charting it, and keeping track of numbers and all of that, but you must stay in the visionary mode if you are to keep the energy continually flowing.

In order to benefit by group dynamics, it takes someone to lead and cause singular focus. In other words, a co-creation is not a co-creation UNLESS you are SINGULARLY FOCUSED upon what you are creating and so communication is very important. In other words talking about what you want and why you want it. Adding to the greater vision of how it will be. Talking to one another.

And the most important thing we would say about working in a group:if you ever feel the impulse to critique someone, or point out what they are doing wrong, bite your tongue and change your energy. Because all of that offering is destructive not only to the group but to the individuals involved.

We often hear people as they begin to recognize that you get what you think about. They will hear someone verbalizing out loud and right away they’ll “tsk tsk.”  Instead of “tsk tsk” we want you to immediately begin to KNOW what they want and KNOW what they mean and NEVER MIND what they are saying. Words don’t matter at all.

KEEP YOUR IDEAS TO YOURSELF UNTIL THEY ARE FULLY DEVELOPED.

If people begin to talk about an idea before they have amassed enough energetic Point of Attraction, others will often amplify the reality of what they are living rather than thevision, and they throw enough cold weather or disapproval on it, that it is often enough to cause the person to lose all their vibrational momentum. That is the only danger we see in group dynamics. From our perspective there are far more advantages than disadvantages to group dynamics, if everyone involved is willing to mind their own business and see themselves as an amplifier of success. Period. 

So often they just become a bigger dynamic of what they do as individuals which doesn’t work. They’ve got a group vision and then they keep trying to work the bugs out of it, and you can’t do both. You can’t work the bugs out and STAY IN THE VISIONARY MODE. When you go from Visionary mode to Actionary Mode you lose your connection and you become less dynamic, less satisfied, less successful, and you have more to talk about in your group meetings.

Abraham 12/95 in Maui

 

Abe: Individual Desires Make Economy Grow

IT IS YOUR INDIVIDUAL DESIRES THAT MAKE YOUR ECONOMY GROW

Your selfish nature, (which is a very good thing),  the desire that is pulsing within you, is what summons Source - and that is what is at the heart of all economy. At the basis of every company are individuals with individual desires. Companies (structures through which wealth flows) are then created in order to satisfy those desires.

In other words, when you ask, it is always given. If the operators of these companies are not diligent about their profits, then there can be no ongoing organization that fulfills the needs and desires of those who are participating. And so, condemning an organization for its profitable operation, only makes one personally out of alignment.