Seth: Disapproval of Self Hinders

Seth, Book Five of the Personal Sessions, pages 203-204:

Now: Right now, self-disapproval is involved. You disapprove of yourself because you feel poorly—and because you do not approve of the basic feelings that are behind the difficulty. (an upset stomach for Rob)

You do not approve of yourself because you think you should be making money “on your own.” You do not approve of yourself because you think you should be a better artist, or a better writer—but in any case, you do not let yourself appreciate the self that you are.

When you realize this, then you disapprove of yourself for not being wise enough to understand. Behind this is still the idea that self-disapproval is somehow valuable—it will somehow make you better.

[snip]

Try to be more compassionate toward yourself and your feelings. Do not judge your feelings. The disapproval causes you to bury them. Out in the open, you can handle them easily.

Ideas have changed also since your (childhood), when those ideas were instilled in you. The feelings become exaggerated, and prevent you from accepting the quite valid feelings of your own worth. Approve of yourself as you are, now. Avoid thoughts of regret. Doors of all kinds will open when you take away that restraining mental habit.

(Pause.) "Peace."

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