Seth: Differentiate Between Primary and Secondary Experience

Seth, The Nature of the Psyche, Session 799

Seth: Now, Physically your body has a stance in space and time.

I will speak of primary and secondary experience. Let us call primary experience that which exists immediately in sense terms in your moment of time--the contact of body with environment.

I am creating certain divisions here to make our discussion---or (with a smile) monologue-easier. Therefore, I will call secondary experience that information that comes to you through, say, reading, television, discussion with others, letters, and so forth.

The secondary kind of experience is largely symbolic. This should be clear.

Reading about a war in the middle of a quiet sunny afternoon is not the same thing as being in the war, however vivid the description.

Reading about the energy shortage is not the same as sitting in a cold house.

Reading about the possible annihilation of mankind through nuclear destruction or other stupidities, while you are sitting calmly enough in your living room, is obviously far divorced from the actuality described in an article.

At the levels with which we are concerned, the body must primarily react to present, immediate, primary existence in space and time.

At other levels it is equipped to handle many kinds of data, in that I have mentioned before the precognition of cells. But the body depends on the conscious mind to give it a clear assessment of precise conditions of the space and time it occupies. It depends upon that knowledge.

If you are safely ensconced in a comfortable room, in no present danger, your senses should accurately convey that information.

Your conscious mind should assimilate it. It should be an easy enough accomplishment to look around you and see that you are in no danger.

Your conscious mind is meant to give your body an assessment of what I will call cultural conditions, for there are sophistications and specifications that in your terms consciousness alone can assess.

If, under conditions naturally safe in the terms of primary experience, you become overwhelmed by unsafe signals from secondary experience - that is, from your reading or whatever-you show a lack of discrimination.

You are not able to differentiate between the physically safe present situation, and the imagined, which is perhaps unsafe, calling forth the alarms of danger.

The body mechanisms become highly disoriented. The signals to the body are very contradictory, so that after a while, if such conditions continue, you can no longer tell whether you are in actual danger or imagined danger.

Your mind then forces your body to be in a state of constant alert- but more unfortunately, you train yourself to ignore your direct, sensual feedback in the present moment.

Your body then might say you are safe, and your senses show you that no danger is present-yet you have begun to rely so upon secondary experience that you do not trust your creature reactions.

Because of man's great gift of imagination, however, the alarm signals not only invade a safe present moment, but go jangling into the next one and the one following, and are endlessly projected into the future.

To whatever extent, and in whatever fashion, each individual is therefore robbed of his or her belief in the personal ability to act meaningfully or with purpose in the present.

The body cannot act tomorrow, today.

Its sense data must be clear. This resulting feeling of powerlessness to act leads to a state of hopelessness of varying degrees-and that mood does not tie itself to specific details, but pervades emotional life if it is allowed to.

Why Does the Media Broadcast Pain, but Censor Pleasure?

Excerpt from Abraham's latest book "The Vortex" p. 135-6

Jerry: I also notice that in our culture it seems perfectly appropriate for television and movies to depict the maiming of people, and destruction and gore- anything horrible as far as destroying the human body- while it seems inappropriate to show human sexuality and pleasure. I've never understood why our culture has come to the place where it can stand hate and anger and pain, but doesn't want to see pleasure.

Abraham: It is not a matter of their wanting to see hate, anger, and pain, and not wanting to see pleasure. In fact, the opposite of that is true: people do want to feel good, and they want to see things that are successful and beautiful and pleasurable.

Many people are attracting to thmselves unwanted things by virtue of their atettention to those unwanted things. A misunderstanding of the Laws of the Universe is at the heart of this conversation as the people of your society wage wars against the things they do not want: war against terror, war against AIDs, war against teenage pregnancy, war against violence, war against cancer - adn every one of those things is getting bigger because attention to unwanted creates more unwanted.

Your moviemakers, whether they understand the Law of Attraction or not, understand that people do gravitate more toward viewing unwanted things than wanted. And we sumbit that the reason that is true is because there are strong active Vibrations in most people about what they do not want. If you were to engage the average person in coversation about what is going on with his life, you would find him much more articulate in expressing the things that are not working well - things that are unjust and things that need to be changed than he would be able to express the aeauty of his life and world.

Also, once you have decided that the world is leaning toward anger and hate, you are no longer a Vibrational Match to the beauty of the wolrd- and the world, as you attract, then leans in the direction of your belief. Anyone who begins to make list of the positive aspects of the world around them will train their Vibartion and therefore their own point of attraction to more of that.

Meanwhile, the people who make movies will continue to make the movies that people are attracting from them. We would like to help you remember that if you are waiting around for your society to get straightened out before you have a happy life experience, you will have a very long wait. If you are waiting for anybody else in your epxiernce to get straightened out before you ahve a happy experience you will have a very long wait.

You are not here to discover that which is perfect. You are here to create or to attract that which is perfect. As the contrast of your life, and even of what you are calling unpleasant movies, helps you know what you do not want, you also understand more clearly what you do want. Focus upon what you do want, become a Vibrational Match to what you do want, train your point of attraction to what you do want, and watch your personal world become that.

(c) Abraham-Hicks Publications

Abraham on the News

Abraham-Hicks, San Francisco, CA 8/9/03

When you turn on your television and the network news and it shows you what it has to offer, it is not even handed. It's not even close to being proportional to the well being and not well being.

It is so drastically distorted as it goes all over the planet and finds pockets of things it knows you will worry about and brings it to you.

So as you watch the evening news -- or whenever you are watching it, sometimes you can watch it all day -- as you watch the news, do you notice how they scour the planet for negative stuff to show you and can you feel the disproportion as you say "I've never seen anything like that in my life. I know it must exist somewhere but why am I thinking about it now? What does that person – wherever they are, making it their truth – have to do with me? And why are they telling me about it?"

Well, they are telling you about it because they don't understand Law of Attraction. They understand ratings. They understand that if they can get you worried enough about something you'll probably watch it and that's really what we want to talk about here today.

What is it that causes you to focus upon worrisome truth rather than pleasant fantasy? Or even pleasant truth?

Oh, we'll tell you, we won't torture you. (audience laughter) It's because most of you even those of you who are here who have been listening to us for a while, still believe that there is assertion and there is a source of bad stuff that'll get you if you don't watch out. That's the whole premise of the news. In other words, 'There's bad stuff out there and we're going to alert you about it."

Now this has been brought to absolute absurdity as they put those color codes up for you.

"It is a very high alert today. You know what to do." (audience laughter) "Worry!" Disallow well being. Fuss over something you can't do anything about until you've pinched off your well being and become part of their statistic which gives them the justification to put up another warning.

They mean well, they're just stupid (audience laughter). They don't understand Law of Attraction. If they meant well and understood Law of Attraction what they would be displaying are things that would induce good feelings within you. They'd say, "Oh, the world is beautiful place today. And while there are pockets that are not going so well we won't talk about them because they are so much in the minority and let's emphasize, all of us together, what's working, so that we can establish a vibrational pattern within those that we love that will attract only that which is well being."

Because well being is the order of all things, they would say to you.

Well being is the source that flows and unless you are doing something that pinches the source of well being off, you will thrive."

Seth: Media Confirms Negative Mass Cultural Beliefs Part 3 (Long)

(Seth: The Personal Sessions, aka as The Deleted Sessions from 12/03/77.)

Continued from Part 2:

This session must be taken into consideration with other ones, for I am making certain points here that are important, but that do not of course stand alone. You can if you prefer forget terms like hypnosis, but between tonight's and next Saturday night's session, I strongly advise that you take a half-hour: it can be nap time. Or any time.

Have Ruburt lie of the bed comfortably. You sit beside him or lie on the bed as you prefer-but verbally reassure him. Tell his body that the muscles can relax, that you are there, and it is safe for him to let go. Use relaxation techniques, as in hypnotic techniques, if you want. I have mentioned this before.

Often I do not state the reasons for such suggestions. To some extent - underlined and qualified - you hypnotized yourselves into your view of reality. You helped Ruburt form his. You have not taken my suggestion before for a very simple reason: part of you, Joseph, was not ready to reassure Ruburt in such a fashion, for you were not certain that it was safe to relax in such a world, and you did not want to lie to Ruburt because you believed the newspaper world so thoroughly - with all, now, of its implications, as Ruburt did.

Such an event represents an intent on both of your parts, you see, a joint effect, a changing of bodily response to a situation.

The newspapers act as hypnotic suggestion of a potent kind.

There is no one present who can confirm the newspaper's evidence. You cannot ask questions of a newspaper, or of a news program. The entire pattern of these latest sessions deals with your inner reactions to your beliefs about yourselves and the world. Tonight I am dealing with a specific area.

To some extent, however, these newspaper beliefs shut you off from full utilization from Framework Two's potency.

Hopefully, I am teaching you to reorganize your inner lives, so that you attract the best to yourselves from inner and outer reality.

Your suggestions to Ruburt along psychic lines were excellent - that he do more energy experiments. His own intention to try out of- body experiments again is also excellent because it shows a change of intent.

I want you to encourage his bodily relaxation in the same manner, creatively. You do not take chances, creatively or any other way, unless you allow your curiosity and exuberance some free play.

If the world seems too unsafe, you set up projections often against shadows, because you have accepted those shadows unthinkingly as facts.

Those ideas, mentioned earlier, even inhibit the free creative flow of our books into the world to some extent, for you do not have as clear a channel as possible.

Never compare the sale of our books to the sale of other books.

Different realities are involved-and you can then get involved with cross purposes. I have said what I intended to say. Again, these sessions are more packed than you realize. Each suggestion I give you is not only given for a reason, but has within it potentials that of course remain latent unless the suggestion is followed.

Do you have any questions?

("No, I guess not.")

(c) Robert F. Butts

Seth: Media Confirms Negative Mass Cultural Beliefs Part 2 (Long)

(Seth: The Personal Sessions, aka as The Deleted Sessions from 12/03/77.)

Continued from Part I:

(With gentle irony.) You made a remark earlier this evening to the effect that the individual could do nothing in the face of such organized behavior-a remark that by now I'm sure you regret voicing.

(I laughed.)

Those ideas to begin with began with individuals. The people who make and report the news are individuals. The people who read or view the news are individuals. To some extent through the books you are helping people alter their psychic organizations, to look at the world in a different fashion, and therefore to view a different world-a world in which their experiences are different than they would have been otherwise.

Many people are already beginning to alter their picture of the world, but they are afraid of trusting their own intuitions.

Consider the lengthy letter from the young English gentleman. In a large measure, the world in which he now lives is a highly more enjoyable and productive one than it was before. His experiences are entirely different than they would have been. In terms of probability, he took a new probable road, which means that his individual impact upon the world, and everyone he meets, will also be different and more creative than it would have been before.

Unless Ruburt does, no one will remark about this young man. No one will trace the beneficial change in his life, and their effects upon others. People generally have been taught to play down their own heroism, and to concentrate upon man's weaknesses, and so your newspapers contain categorized fact upon fact, emphasizing man's errors and stupidities.

It has become virtuous to keep track of these, as if concentrating upon errors will do anything but compound them. I am, again, not telling you to be blind to physical events, but to realize that the news media, and your organizations, are not giving you an "objective" view of the world, but a view compounded and composed by Freudian and Darwinian beliefs.

I would also like to remind you both of the difference between direct experience and second-handed tales. Examine your own personal experience with physical reality now and then when you have a moment (with irony), relying only upon your own experience.

It is impossible, I know, and not really beneficial, to try to separate yourselves entirely from the cultural world, but you should understand the makeup of that world, and be able now and then at least to separate your private experiences from it, even though they must occur in its context.

How many crimes have you each personally encountered?

How many people have been generally well-disposed toward you?

How many have been actively vicious?

What has actually been your own experience with war, with prejudice, with hatred?

How much of your view of reality has been formed by direct experience, and now much has been formed through secondary sources, such as communications media, or tales brought to you by others?

This is an excellent exercise because it puts you in touch with your own experience, and at least gives you a point from which you can make judgments of your own. Your neighbor, Joe, had pneumonia, or a cold, or the snivels (upon returning from Florida last week).

To Margaret he had pneumonia, because she organizes reality in a certain fashion, and by slightly exaggerating certain data, she then uses it to reinforce certain beliefs. She then must take steps of course to protect herself against illness, and she is in fear of robbers for the same reason. She does not trust her body nor her fellow men. She watches news for stories of illnesses and robbers.

Those ideas do not exist alone. They have an emotional effect. To some extent, it is because you have accepted the newspapers' view of reality as real, that you have allowed yourselves to dwell upon certain attitudes about your fellows-so that for example sometimes the world does not seem to deserve great art; or that you even feel you do not want to share your work with the stupid bastards (Seth said, staring at me. I laughed again).

I am trying to induce Ruburt to drop his muscular armor. In the world of his experience he does not need it. His direct experience has not included it, the cruel adult world that he must protect himself against.

It certainly does not include a frightening psychic world, actually or otherwise. Any fears he had there he picked up through reading, or through the reports of others, so let him also separate his private experience in that respect.

Collecting such distorted data about inner or outer worlds can only make an individual build up defenses, or want to.

The newspaper world is, then, highly distorted, organized in such a manner that its data reinforce negative beliefs, and constantly give evidence only of negative patterns. These then are taken as an objective picture of the fact world.

All of the heroism, the private and even mass triumph, and the good intent, have been left out.

The world is seen as a patient, sick in body, insane of mind, a thing that needs treatment, a Freudian and Darwinian monster.

Even with your own changed beliefs, the two of you still see that mirror when you read a newspaper, and do not realize the invisible organizations behind the news. It makes it seem foolhardy to relax, doesn't it? (Ironically, leaning forward for emphasis.)

All of these things to some extent stand in the way of Ruburt's recovery. They point precisely to those areas in which both of you heartily agreed, though Ruburt's way of getting work done was not yours.

To Be Continued...

Seth: Media Confirms Negative Mass Cultural Beliefs Part 1 (Long)

(Seth: The Personal Sessions, also known as The Deleted Sessions from 12/03/77)

Seth: Good evening.

Now: in basic terms you form your reality, privately and en mass-through your beliefs, of course, and those beliefs cause you to organize your psychic world in certain fashions. You use such belief organizations to concentrate upon certain data and ignore other, so that consciously and unconsciously, you organize inner and outer stimuli so that it makes sense according to your beliefs, and forms therefore a more or less dependable framework in which action and response are possible.

History is written according to the present beliefs of a historian in his time. As you know, your western world followed its own mixture of Christianity, Darwinism, and Freudian psychology. Because those ideas still are largely in the mainstream of your society, your television news, newspapers, and magazines are invisibly slanted.

The news is invisibly organized to fit certain patterns, so that when you read or hear it, it carries the seemingly indelible mark, confirming the basic beliefs of the culture. I am not speaking strictly of political parties or political newspapers, or of any specialized journals or magazines, but of the overall pattern displayed by all of your mass communications.

You can see easily, however, the highly specialized, intensified view of the world that is apparent in scientific journals. These are in sharp conflict with, for example, religious journals. If you look you can easily become aware of these specialized worlds. Regardless of these differences, the overall picture is largely the same: you cannot trust yourself, your body, the natural world.

You are everywhere presented with the evidence. The headlines speak of problems between nations, mass and private crime, illness. The misuse of animals, man's stupidity and cruelty, so it seems that the species is nearly insane.

Let us look at the invisible organization behind such material, however.

I do not want to shock you, but there are quite as many cases of honest heroism as there are crimes committed.

There are patterns of highly constructive change that never show, as far as your media is concerned.

There are as many people recovering from diseases, even by themselves, as those who succumb.

There are compensating, creative earth patterns occurring in terms of energy, but these do not show.

If you do not understand this, then you will take your newspapers and other news unthinkingly, thinking that a fairly adequate picture of world events is being portrayed-a picture that only deepens the negative feelings that are behind the invisible organization of such data.

In such a way you miss any significant evidence to the contrary.

Privately, then, you will to some extent or another have to take up defenses against that reality.

As long as you think that your physical information about the world, through newspapers and so forth, presents a fairly adequate, objective view of events, then all of the evidence to the contrary will literally be invisible, for you will continue to organize your view of the world in the old way.

You will think, for example, when a story about misuse of political power is concerned, "That's only one story. How many more politicians do the same thing?"

For the newspapers also act in a suggestive fashion, further programming your expectations.

In a way you organize your physical experience as you do your inner life, through association, through emotional association. I am not simple speaking of sensationalism in newspapers or on TV.

When you read the news or hear it, however, because of cultural beliefs you are programmed to behave in a certain fashion, in a fashion that validates, seemingly, the concepts of Freud and Darwin, and the most unfortunate aspects of Christian pessimism.

This is not done with any ill intent. Individuals collect the news and write it. To many people, some kind of organization , even one that is wobbly, is far better than facing the task of setting up an entirely new view of reality. The inner structure of most of your organizations and institutions are based on those old precepts.

Individual lives have been constructed along those frameworks.

(To Be Continued...)