Seth Classic: Practicing Idealist

Seth, The Individual and the Nature of Mass Events, Session 873, p. 301,  08/15/79

Seth: In a manner of speaking, you must be a practicing idealist if you are to remain a true idealist for long. You must take small practical steps, often when you would prefer to take giant ones — but you must move in the direction of your ideals through action. Otherwise you will feel disillusioned, or powerless, or sure, again, that only drastic, highly unideal methods will ever bring about the achievement of a given ideal state or situation.

Life at all levels of activity is propelled to seek ideals, whether of a biological or mental nature. That pursuit automatically gives life its zest and natural sense of excitement and drama. Developing your own abilities, whatever they may be, exploring and expanding your experience of selfhood, gives life a sense of purpose, meaning, and creative excitement — and also adds to the understanding and development of the society and the species.

It is not enough to meditate, or to imagine in your mind some desired goal being accomplished, if you are afraid to act upon the very impulses to which your meditations and imaginings give rise. When you do not take any steps toward an ideal position, then your life does lack excitement. You become depressed. You might become an idealist in reverse, so that you find a certain excitement in contemplating the occurrence of natural disasters, such as earthquakes.

You may begin to concentrate your attention on such activities. You may contemplate the end of the world instead, but in either case you are propelled by a sense of personal frustration, and perhaps by some degree of vengeance, seeing in your mind the destruction of a world that fell so far beneath your idealized expectations.

None of the unfortunate situations discussed in this book have any power over you, however, if you understand that events do not exist by themselves. All events and situations exist first within the mind. At the deepest levels of communication no news is secret, whether or not you receive it by way of your technological gadgets.

Your thoughts and beliefs and desires form the events that you view on television. If you want to change your world, you must first change your thoughts, expectations, and beliefs. If every reader of this book changed his or her attitudes, even though not one law was rewritten, tomorrow the world would have changed for the better. The new laws would follow.

Any new law always follows the change in belief. It is not the other way around.

There is no civilization, no system of science, art, or philosophy, that did not originate in the mind. When you give lip service to ideas with which you do not agree, you are betraying your own ideals, harming yourself to some extent, and society as well, insofar as you are denying yourself and society the benefit of your own understanding. Each person is an idealist. I simply want to help you practice your idealism in the acts of your daily life.

Each person alive helps paint the living picture of civilization as it exists at any given time, in your terms. Be your own best artist. Your thoughts, feelings and expectations are like the living brush strokes with which you paint your corner of life's landscape. If you do your best in your own life, then you are indeed helping to improve the quality of all life. Your thoughts are as real as snowflakes or raindrops or clouds. They mix and merge with the thoughts of others, to form man's livingscape, providing the vast mental elements from which physical events will be formed.


© Laurel Butts

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.

Seth Classic: There Are No Accidents

Seth Class, June, 1973 excerpted from Conversations with Seth.

(Slightly modified to fit blog dialogue format.)

Seth: Any accident – and this applies to each of you - is no accident. Your good health or poor health is no accident. All of this has meaning to you.

If you cut your finger, it is no accident. If you stub your toe, it is no accident. If you come down with the flu, or with a virus, it is no accident. If you have a chronic physical difficulty, it is no accident. If you are creative, it is no accident. If you get good news, it is no accident. If lovely things happen to you, it is no accident.

You form your reality. And this applies all the way down the scale from your consciousness that you think of, to the tiniest molecule in Lauren's eye!

Bob (Class Member): I was thinking about my motorcycle accident. It was basically the same thing. It's true that I solved a lot of problems, but I can't help thinking that I could have solved the same problems without doing something so radical.

Seth: Perhaps now you will work out problems at conscious levels. It is only when you are not willing to face consciously your own beliefs, and face them through and make distinctions, that seemingly unconscious accidents occur: when all of a sudden you are not as quick as you should be; or, when all of a sudden, your reactions are not as good when a car comes that should not be there.

Each of you has your own way, and an event that seems horrendous from the outside-from the inside, from your private viewpoints, may be something else entirely.

[snip]

In nature, there are no accidents. If you accept the possibility of the slightest, smallest, most insignificant accidents, then indeed you open a Pandora's Box, for logically, there cannot be simply one small accident, but a universe in which accidents are not the exception but the rule. A universe in which, therefore, following logically, your consciousness is a combination of an accidental conglomeration of atoms and molecules without reason or cause that will vanish into nonexistence forever even as, indeed, they would have come from nonexistence.

Once you accept, you see, that idea, then if you follow your thought completely enough, you must accept the idea of a random accidental universe, in which you are at the mercy of any accident, in which mind or purpose have little meaning, in which you are at the mercy of all random happenings, in which 300,000 human beings can be swept off the face of the planet without reason, without cause, simply at the whim of an accidental happening.

And if that is the universe in which you believe that you live, then it is a dire and foreboding universe, indeed.

In that universe, the individual has little hope, for he will return to the nonexistence that his random physical creation came from. Following that line of thought, then, if you follow this through, a group of atoms and molecules were accidentally sparked into consciousness and song and then will return to the chaos from which they came; and the individual has no control over his destiny, for it can be swept aside at any point by random fate, over which he has no recourse.

All of this can be related to ordinary life. Whenever you think that you have a headache, simply because you have a headache; or you bump into a door simply because you bump into a door; or you have an accident simply because you happen to be in a particular place at a particular time; whenever you feel yourself powerless, then you think that accidents happen and that you have no control over them. The only answer is to realize that you form physical events, individually and en masse. And as I have said time and time again, you form the physical reality that you know.

Seth Classic in 3 Steps: Open In Case of Trouble

Seth - The Way Toward Health - April 19th, 1984

Seth: There are certain simple steps that can be followed, whenever you find yourself in a difficult situation, whether the condition is one of poor health, a stressful personal involvement with another, a financial dilemma, or whatever.

These steps seem very obvious, and perhaps too easy—but they will bring an immediate sense of ease and peace of mind while your inner reserves are being released and activated.

I have mentioned these steps many times, because they are so vital in clearing the conscious mind, and bringing some sense of relief to the frightened ego.

1. Immediately begin to live in the present as much as possible. Try to become as aware as you can of present sense-data—all of it. Often, while you are in pain for example, you concentrate upon that sensation alone, ignoring the feelings of ease that may be felt by other portions of the body and unaware of the conglomeration of sounds, sights and impressions that are also in the immediate environment. This procedure will immediately lessen the pressure of the problem itself, whatever it is, and give you a sense of refreshment.
   
   
2. Refuse to worry. This fits automatically with step 1, of course. Tell yourself you can worry all you want tomorrow, or on some other occasion, but resolve not to worry in the present moment.
   
   
3. When your thoughts do touch upon your particular problem in that present moment, imagine the best possible solution to the dilemma. Do not wonder how or why or even when the ideal solution will come, but see it in your mind’s eye as accomplished. Or if you are not particularly good at visual imagery, then try to get the feeling of thanksgiving and joy that you would feel if the problem was solved to your complete satisfaction.

These steps will allow you breathing time, and actually help minimize the pressure of your situation, whatever it is. Then quieted, you will be able to consider other more suitable steps that may more directly address your particular solution.

Seth Classic: New Job as an Event to be Activated

Seth, The Individual and the Nature of Mass Events, Session 822, Page 106

The inner ego is a portion of the self, for example — is the portion of your self — that is aware of your reincarnational activities. It is the part of you that exists outside of time, yet simultaneously lives in time.

You form your own reality.

The ego that you are aware of obviously could not form your body for you, however, or grow your bones. It knows how to assess the conditions of the world. It makes deductions. Your reasoning is highly important, yet alone it cannot pump your blood or tell your eyes how to see.

The inner ego does the actual work that brings about the events you have decided upon.

In very simple terms, if you want to pick up a book, and then do so, you experience that event consciously, though you are quite unaware of all the inner events that occurred to bring the motion about. The inner ego directs those activities.

If you want to change your job, and hold that desire, a new job will come into your experience in precisely the same fashion, in that the inner events will be arranged by the inner ego. A body event involves the working of numerous muscles and joints and so forth.

An event involving a job change concerns motion on the part of all of the inner egos involved. Obviously, then, a mass physical event implies an inner system of communications of proportions that would put your technological communications to shame.

© Robert and Laurel Butts

Seth pwns the Left and the Right back in 1973

Blogger's note: I can't emphasize enough, btw, that if you only get one Seth book, get this one. I can post bits and pieces, but the whole picture becomes viscerally more clear from reading the book in its entirety and having it around as a reference. Mine is in tatters. 

Seth, The Nature of Personal Reality,  Session 650

Many believe that it is “good” and morally superior to be Christian, white, wealthy and in excellent health. Now, the word “male” can also be added to this list of preferred attributes. These people may be of any age. They may come from any economic environment. Now if you happen to be Protestant, male, white, American, rich, and healthy, at least within the framework of your beliefs you can look at yourself with “clear” eyes. Your foundation is shaky, indeed, but at least you fit within it for the moment. You will notice that I added “Protestant” to our value system, as well as “American.” If, however, you hold this group of beliefs and you fall short - that is, if in some way you do not fit in - then even within that system you are in trouble.

In that chart of belief, disease, poverty, femininity to some extent, non-Christian concepts, and a non-Caucasian racial heritage, are all considered wrong to one degree or another.  Now: Any intrusion of other beliefs here will be considered threatening. Both racial problems and religious dissension will be rationalized from the standpoint of these beliefs. Some of my readers may consider themselves quite enlightened, believing, for example, in reincarnation as a series of consecutive lives.  However, they may then use that concept to justify their belief in the inferiority of other races. They may say that since an individual chose his or her problems in this life-deciding for instance to be born black, or poor, or both-that karma is being worked out; therefore such issues should not be adjusted through a change of law or custom. Period.

On the left side, looking at a second diagram, you will find people in this case, and in this country, of a more “liberal” frame of mind. But you will not find them quite as liberal if you understand that they are as prejudiced in one direction as the first group is in another.

Here we have a system of belief in which it is wrong to be white, American, or wealthy, or even at all well-off in financial terms. All of the distortions in Christianity are apparent, where the first group is blind to them, of course. Here, though, wealth and a white skin are not only bad, but obvious symptoms of moral deterioration. If the first system of beliefs sees money and goods as a sign of God’s blessing, the second group views all material possessions as evidence of spiritual decay.  Here the exotic is romanticized, the foreign held up, the picturesque seen as the real. Black skin or brown skin becomes the criteria of spiritual perfection, and poverty as a badge of honor to be worn not only proudly, but often to be used as an aggressive tool. The people who follow these belief systems think that they are right. Their living style, community affiliations, and political leanings will be in direct opposition to the “white-wealthy” ethic.

Now, if you happen to be black or brown, poor, and believe in this system, you will at least feel secure within it. If you are instead white and wealthy and hold such beliefs, you will think yourself quite inferior indeed, and do everything in your power to show how picturesque and liberal and open-minded and black or brown you can be while still being white, fairly well-off, and perhaps secretly addicted to your Christianity.  You will doubtlessly have Buddhas tastefully displayed, and Indian beads.”

Seth Classic: Don't Neglect the Rational (Action).

Seth, The Magical Approach, Session 5, p. 55

In other words, the magical approach and the so-called rational one are to be combined in a certain fashion for best results. People sometimes smite you, telling of their intent to make money - or rather, to have it. They concentrate upon money, so they say, and await for it in full faith that it will be attracted to them because of their belief and concentration. They might do the point of power exercise, for example. They may also, however, have quit their jobs, ignored impulses to find other work, or to take any rational approaches, and rely upon, say, the magical approach alone. This does not work either, of course.

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 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

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

 

Seth Classic: Point of Power Exercise from NOPR

FIVE MINUTE POINT OF POWER EXERCISE

(You keep contrasting) what you want with what you have, and it is very easy to become discouraged in so doing, but looking for errors in the past will not help you. A correctly utilized five-minute period of time can be of great benefit, however. In this period concentrate upon the fact that the point of power is now. Feel and dwell upon the certainty that your emotional, spiritual and psychic abilities are focused through the flesh, and for five minutes only direct all of your attention toward what you want. Use visualization or verbal thought—whatever comes most naturally to you; but for that period do not concentrate upon any lacks, just upon your desire.

Use all of your energy and attention. Then forget about it.  Do not check to see how well it is working. Simply make sure that in that period your intentions are clear. Then in one way or another, according to your own individual situation, make one physical gesture of act that is in line with your belief or desire. 

Behave, physically, then, at least once a day in a way that shows that you have faith in what you are doing. The act can be a very simple one. If you are lonely and feel unwanted, it can merely involve your smiling at someone else.  If you are poor, it can involve such a simple thing as buying an item you want that costs two cents more than the one you would usually buy—acting on the faith, even that feebly, that the two cents will somehow be given you or come into your experience; but acting as if you had more than you do.

In health terms, it involves conducting yourself once a day as though you were not sick in whatever way given you.  But the belief in the present, reinforced for five minutes, plus such a physical action, will sometimes bring literally awesome results.

Such effects will occur however only if you cease looking into the past “for what is wrong,” and stop reinforcing your negative experience.  These same principles can be used in any area of your life, and in each you are choosing from a variety of probable events.

Those of you who believe in reincarnation in more or less conventional terms, can make the error of using or blaming “past” lives, organizing them through your current beliefs. It is bad enough to believe that you are at the mercy of one past, but to consider yourself helpless before innumerable previous errors from other lives puts you in an impossible situation; the conscious will is robbed of its power to act. Such lives exist simultaneously. They are other expressions of yourself, interacting, but with each conscious self possessing the point of power in it’s own present.

It is for this reason that “past-life information” is so often used to reinforce current personal social situations—because, like the past in this life, such memories are constructed through present belief.

(Emphatically) If such information is given to you by another, by a psychic, for example, that  individual is also very apt to pick up those “lives” that make sense to you now, and to structure them precisely along the lines of your beliefs. This may not seem obvious. In an individual beliefs that  he is basically unworthy he will recall or be given, those lives that justify that idea. If he thinks he must pay for his sins now, then that belief will attract memory of those lives that will reinforce it; this will be highly organized recall, leaving out everything that does not apply.

If an individual believes that he is being taken advantage of , and is caught in a mundane existence, unappreciated, then he may receive from himself or others information showing that in other lives he was greatly honored—thereby reinforcing his belief that now he is taken for granted, or worse.

These statements of mine are general, for each individual will have his or her own way of reinforcing beliefs. If you think you are ill, most likely past life info will show that you committed crimes for which you are now doing penance. In whatever framework you choose you will always find proper reinforcement for your belief.

The truth as far as it can be stated is this: YOU FORM YOUR REALITY NOW, in capital letters, through he intersection of soul in flesh, and in your terms the present is your point of power.

So you want as break.

"Yes," says Jane. Jane’s trance had been excellent, her delivery steady and often very emphatic. “Boy, I’ve got the whole thing right there, “ she said enthusiastically.

Seth, The Nature of Personal Reality, p. 311-312

Classic Seth: Personal Advice to Rob/Jane on Money (Long)

Seth, Book 8 of The Early Sessions, Session 404

APRIL 8, 1968 9 PM MONDAY

Seth: Do you want me to tell you how to better your financial circumstances, or do you want to learn the hard way?

("No. Tell me. " )

You have been told but you have not taken the information seriously because you were not ready, as earlier Ruburt was not ready to. First of all, all negative attitudes must be removed from your consciousness. You are attracting further financial problems in your desperation. You are focusing upon poverty rather than wealth.

It may seem to you highly impractical, unrealistic and downright foolish to ignore the physical circumstances of debts and expenses. To focus upon them, I tell you, is to bring more upon yourself. The rule of expectation applies.

When you receive a bill do not automatically react as you have, instead as if you were contemplating a new painting. Form in your mind the image of a check to that amount. See yourself celebrating as you pay the final amount on your car. See in your mind's eye a surplus of money in your folder when the month's expenses are paid.

Now your financial situation will not change no matter how you push yourself, unless you apply such simple exercises. You do not do this naturally, is which is why they are required. You must indeed think consciously in terms of plenty rather than of want. On several occasions Ruburt has followed these and your wants have been fulfilled.

You have been fighting him in this regard, and this has impeded the efforts he has lately been making. Now these exercises will prove themselves out in practical terms, but you must give them the opportunity to prove themselves.

Your subjective life has been somewhat permeated by thoughts of want and literally poverty, until you have indeed exaggerated your own situation. The exaggerated situation could come to pass however if you persist in projecting those images outward.

They would not help you get a raise but act to the contrary, and they have done so in the past. I am giving you advice in very practical terms. What you do with it is up to you. But you have severely limited yourself in this respect.

In the past Ruburt helped you generate such negative ideas, but he has been making an attempt to combat them. His own experience has proven to him that I was right in other regards. As long as you believe that others are taking advantage of you, they will do so. The origin is in yourself, and this is what you have not so far understood.

("I think I have been aware of that.")

The origin is not in others. For fifteen minutes a day agree to suspend critical judgment, and following the Maltz method imagine yourself vividly in the position you would like to be. The rest of the time consciously make an effort to control your attitude when you find yourself thinking in terms of want or poverty.

Then switch your thoughts to ideas of plenty. This need not involve hypocrisy, indeed must not. You must feel that this is legitimate and practical, because the thoughts of plenty will automatically begin to attract plenty.

This is sufficient. There should not be an overemphasis (underlined) on material possessions or security however.

Now this program if faithfully followed will bring results. It will initiate intuitive concepts, ideas in your work which will automatically attract others to possess them. It will initiate other actions that will result in financial betterment.

Do you have any questions pertaining to this particular material?

("I have a lot of them. Its hard to ask them all at once on short notice though. ")

Part of your attitude is a result of your family situation and of identification with the past.

("I know it. And I'm tired of it, too.")

Still the old feeling, always an excuse, that poverty is pure and more virtuous.

Now. An overemphasis on financial matters is indeed detrimental, but if you are worrying about money you are as overly concerned with it as any miser.

('"I'd like to forget all about it.")

If you could then this would also be much more effective than your present course.

("I keep telling myself to forget it.")

Now I am telling you to forget it. I have told you that you will never be in severe financial difficulties again, but you do not trust my word enough, so far. You must instead insist upon watching every dollar in the bank, and fearing that it will dwindle away. And then of course it does, and you think that the physical circumstances certainly justify your attitude. But your attitude caused the circumstances.

("My attitude alone?" This I could not believe.)

Your attitude in the main of late.

("How about the dwindling attendance at the ESP classes?")

Ruburt maintained this fairly well. Your own worries have been causing some difficulties here.

("Why can't his positive attitude override my poor one then?")

On occasion it does indeed. Or he would not have any students left. I mean that literally, since in the beginning particularly you did not believe that any would last for any period of time. He does indeed have the ability to attract money, though in the past he was not able to use this ability. He is only now learning to do so, and free enough to do so. Your combined abilities will serve you well here, if you follow my advice.

("I'm not absolving myself, or trying to, but I find it hard to believe that I am the only one involved here.)

I did not say that you were, but only that Ruburt has been making an attempt in the proper direction, and you have not been able so far to make the same attempt.

("For some time I've felt alone in this deal.")

You felt alone because you felt you were worrying alone. Ruburt has for at least two years been actively concerned, very actively. He has attempted however to give the impression of not worrying, and to constructively think in terms of plenty.

Whenever you mentioned a particular bill even in passing, he has immediately imagined it paid and given himself directions so that the needed funds would be obtained. When your rent was first raised within two weeks he had four new students using this method.

("Does he still have them?)

He has two of them.

("Why does he have less students than ever, then?)

Because he does not have less than ever. He has less than he did at the time.

("That's what I mean, I guess.")

This was because of the interaction with your own attitude. Give us a moment. You think in terms of wealth and sensuousness. Wealth as opposed to art or aesthetics. Your father disliked his brother who was wealthy. To have money is therefore a betrayal of your father.

Since your mother pushed your father to make money, then to make money yourself seems an added betrayal toward your father, and seems to ally you with your mother, of whose emotionalism you were always frightened. To you wealth is in some strange way connected with the feeling you have had toward using oil as a medium.

("I'm getting over that. " And am grimly determined too.)

It was not safe, too rich and smothering, like gravy that you also dislike.

("I've become quite mad at my parents in the last year or two.")

Now these connections should help you. The inner resistance to these ideas I am presenting should to some extent vanish as you reread the session. Your own abilities as a creator are extremely strong, your powers of imagery brilliant.

Now in the financial realm you have been using them against yourself

I would have come out more strongly in this regard in the past but Ruburt would not permit it. Now he does. Your combined abilities can directly change your material status. Do you have a question?

("I used to find it quite irritating when Jane passed it off when I mentioned bills.")

He is, as you know, more than usually or normally attentive and sensitive to your remarks. He has always been much more concerned about financial affairs than you realize. There has been what you may call a natural misunderstanding here.

But I tell you that in each of these cases he was attempting to off- set your negative attitude, and to use his abilities in the way he intuitively realized he could, to help matters.

On his part in the past years this was subconscious. He did not realize consciously what he was doing, but was strongly impelled to take the stand that he did, and outraged subconsciously that you did not understand why he took

("Probably because I didn't see any concrete results.")

You did not look for them, and you denied and of course did not see them.

("I mean things like additional money ')

I know exactly what you mean. You negated them.

("Why didn't he negate my attitude?")

Because at the time, in those days, particularly consciously, he would not permit himself to. He was not sure enough. He was working on hunches, to him, and he always followed whatever suggestions you made. He had his own background also, and he was afraid of being successful. These feelings allowed him to follow along with you.


("That's why I'm harping on this point that I'm not alone in this deal.")

I am trying to get you out of this deal.

(I'm willing.")

The fact remains that you have in the recent past not attempted to project thoughts of plenty, and Ruburt has.

("I am fully aware of that.")

Your combined efforts can change your situation.

("Yes, I believe they can. I haven't felt that we've been using any combined efforts particularly)

My dear friend-

("Yes?")

-you are defensive, because you realize too well now the effect of your negative thoughts in this direction. The extent of your reaction should tell you this.

("Yes, I agree.")

If you have further questions I will answer them.

("Lets take a break.")

(10:00. I was surprised that an hour had passed. Jane had been in a deep trance again, and now sat quite still eyes closed I tried to get her out of it. At 10:05 I called her name three times, finally she began to come out of it slowly I do not believe she succeeded too well however, for a remark of mine ended break at 10: 13.)

You do not need to banish the thought of money for you have not been concerned with money, but with the lack of money. You have thought of your dwindling bank account, and I tell you that this is why your bank account is dwindling. The material is not distorted.

If you must think of your bank account-

("I'd rather not.")

-then make all efforts to imagine in your mind those figures you wish were there.

("I don't have any.")

Settle on a reasonable amount (underlined). See them in your mind as your balance, and following Maltz you will then feel those emotions suitably connected with the desired amount. This is what you have not accepted.

("I'd rather think about painting pictures, I guess. ")

Whenever you find yourself thinking of your bank account follow the exercise I have just given you. I am not suggesting that you take the time out. I am suggesting that you devote the same amount of time constructively that you are now spending destructively, and that the new exercises take the place of the old automatically followed negative exercises that you have indeed been faithfully following.

Simply this. Whenever you catch yourself in the old worries, remind yourself of this session, and immediately substitute one of the minute and simple exercises I have provided.

You do not have to kneel down before a money god two hours a day.

For all of your objections Ruburt has studiously taken 15 or 20 minutes a day in what he rightly believes to be practical exercises to better your financial condition. He has had enough success spasmodically to know that the exercises work.

When you have done the same, speak to me again on the same matters. I have not been placing any blame on anyone. I thought I was explaining the simple mechanics involved. In other words you protest too loudly.

("I never used to say anything, I thought speaking up was a step in the right direction.")

It is indeed. I will also answer you now, which is a step in the right direction. Joseph, it is simple. You do have control over your thoughts if you will but exert it.

("I agree with that.")

Thoughts of plenty will bring you plenty in material and financial terms, and in other terms.

Thoughts of want will produce want.

I have not made these rules. When you think in terms of want, and then see physical materializations of want, you are tempted to think that your fears were justified, and therefore those thoughts are reinforced.

But the thoughts caused the want, and I am simply trying to help you stop that cycle. Now, if you and Ruburt could agree on the sort of home you would like, and if you dreamed of it and thought about it specifically, you would have it.

Again, this does not involve anything extra. Instead if you find yourself thinking consciously about the limitations of your apartment, you would then substitute an image of this home, you would automatically be bettering your condition rather than maintaining it.

Now I speak, as you well know, for your own benefit. If you have questions ask them.

("No, I guess I just felt I was alone in the deal.")

You were not indeed, far from it. From the time you purchased your car Ruburt has daily done exercises to lead toward its payment. Whenever your rent has been raised he has done the same, and any outstanding bill for the last six months has met the same treatment. Before this he made subconscious efforts that he felt you did not understand.

("He didn't say anything about it.")

He felt that to open the subject was disastrous to him, for he could not explain, and he did not know consciously how to explain. This is one of the reasons why I chose this subject this evening. Do you have questions?

("No, I guess not.")

Your own visual abilities are often used subconsciously. They are stronger than Ruburt's. He must work for his. Therefore your subconscious negative imagery has on many occasions superseded.

You must realize if you can that no blame is intended here. You would dbe even better off if you could forget the whole issue.

("I'd like to. I try.")

Since you are however so strongly concerned with it these exercises will be of great benefit. I will give you a practical example here.

Now Ruburt in his exercises has been imagining vividly his dream book sold, selling. While you have been imagining the dwindling accounts and pessimistically thinking that after all the book may not sell, and to be practical you cannot be sure that the outline will sell and your efforts therefore have been knocking each other out.

Your thoughts are the reality. Do you have questions? You may indeed speak up.

("No, I guess not. I can't think of anything.")

You may pile them up for me at your next session.

("Is trying to forget about the whole bit the best course?")

The point is to let, permit, allow yourself to forget, not force.

("That is what I mean.")

You must allow yourself to think naturally, and thoughts of plenty will follow. You should not ideally have to do any exercises. They are to counter the negative exercises that you are doing.

("I know it. ")

What you should do, you see, is simply trust, for this is the most practical point of all.

("Yes.")

I will end the session unless you have further comments.

("No.")

I cannot stress too strongly however the main points I have made
tonight. Give me a moment.

Now, from your own experience, when Ruburt and you are in a condition of positive love, you see, do you sense the inner feeling of abundance?

("Yes.")

This is to some extent of the same nature. That feeling of abundance and trust will in itself bring you plenty and abundance. It will attract intuitive ideas on your part, and intuitive actions on the part of others.

Indeed Ruburt read an article this afternoon on brain waves, but I tell you that you send out messages of abundance or want.

Now do not short change yourself. This trust is the basis of your existence. You have much that others more financially secure would envy, and do envy. You have projected those thoughts directing to yourself that which means most to you. Do not ignore what you have. The point is that in this one area you have felt insecure for various reasons, afraid to possess money.

Understanding will help you. The exercises I have given you in themselves will begin to negate the causes behind this failure. Do you see?

("Yes.")

We will then end the session.

("Did you hear me earlier, when I said I'd been mad at my parents for some time now?")

I did indeed, and anger will not help you, nor resentment.

("I don't think I could have really escaped some of that, though.")

You could not have. The point is, if you see yourself as financially independent and of abundant means, this will come to pass and regardless of your parents. They will be well cared for. Burdens will drop from your shoulders when you begin to see yourself unburdened.

("Okay.")

Now I have tried to help you this evening, and I hope that I have done so.

(10:50. Long pause, eyes closed. "Good night, Seth." )

(Jane had been speaking vigorously, rubbing her face and hair often in trance, opening and closing her eyes. Her eyes closed for some time at the end of the session. Finally she began to come out of it, again the trance had been a deep one. She remembered none of the last delivery.)

Seth, Book 8 of The Early Sessions, Session 404