Imagination and beliefs. I

SESSION 619, 9 OCTOBER 1972 2PM 6 MONDAY

My mother lives with my brother and her family in a small town in upstate New York, near Rochester, and Jane and I had visited them for the weekend. Driving back to Elmira this morning, Jane commented, "Someone is working on Seth's book, I can assure you. I keep getting fragments of it. It deals with the imagination and the beliefs, I believe, and how they interact, only that there is still much more. Well, "he added, pleased," it's good to know that the work is done ... "

I wish you good night.

Let's retake the dictation. Imagination plays an important role in your subjective life, as it provides mobility to your beliefs. It is one of the motivating agents that help transform your beliefs into physical experience. So it is vitally important that you understand the interplay between ideas and imagination. In order to discard inappropriate beliefs and establish new ones, you must learn to use the imagination to move concepts in and out of the mind. Proper use of imagination can push ideas in the direction you want.

End of chapter three.


4. IMAGINATION AND BELIEFS, AND A BRIEF WORDS ON THE ORIGIN OF BELIEFS

In physical life, the conscious mind depends largely on the functioning of the physical brain. You have a conscious mind whether you are incarnated or not, but when you are physically oriented the mind is connected to the physical brain.

The brain, to a certain extent, keeps the mind three-dimensional. It guides you to the environment in which you must work, and it is thanks to the relationship of the mind to the temporal brain that you perceive time as a series of moments.

The brain channels to the physical structure the information the mind receives, so that your experience is sifted physically and automatically translated into terms that the organism can understand. Therefore, speaking from the physical point of view and life as you conceive it, the mind depends to a large extent on the development and activity of the brain. There is certain information necessary for the physical survival that must be taught and passed from father to son. There are basic premises of a general nature with which you are born; But as the specific conditions of the environment are very diverse, these premises must be applied. So it is necessary for the child to accept the beliefs of his parents, since they reinforce the family group when the child needs more protection. Thus, this acceptance of beliefs is important in the early stages of life, when the baby becomes a child. Sharing common ideas not only protects the new generation from the dangers that are evident to parents, but also serves as a frame of reference within which the child can grow and develop.

This provides a certain margin of freedom until the conscious mind is able to reason for itself and to make its own value judgments. Later we will comment on the more general aspects of the origin of ideas, but for now we will talk about what concerns this life, which you know.

The beliefs you receive, therefore, are the conceptions that your parents harbor about the nature of reality. You are transmitted through example, verbal communication, and constant telepathic reinforcement. You get ideas about the world in general and about your relationship with him; And from your parents you also receive notions of what you are. You are learning your ideas about your own reality.

Underneath all of this, within you you unfailingly carry the knowledge of your identity, meaning and purpose, but during the early stages of growth much attention is paid to your relationship with the physical world. These are directional beliefs that you receive from your parents, and that guide you in a way that they believe to be safe. Protected by these beliefs, the child can be safe and satisfy his curiosity, develop his faculties and dump all his energy in areas of activity well delimited.

So the acceptance of beliefs is very necessary, especially in the early years of life. There is no reason, however, for a person to be able to get rid of the beliefs and experiences of childhood. The nature of some of these beliefs is such that, although the most obvious ones are recognized as harmful or foolish, "other relationships with them" may not be understood with equal ease.

Let's look at an example. It may seem silly to you that you would ever believe in original sin. But perhaps you do not realize that much of your current actions are based on a belief in "guilt". We will speak at length about how your beliefs may be related since you are not accustomed to examine them.

You may say, "I'm fat because I feel guilty about something that has to do with my past." You may try to find out what that prosecutable event was, but in this case the problem is a belief in guilt itself.

You do not have to carry such a belief. I know very well that your civilization has powerful elements based on the idea of ​​guilt and punishment. Many of you believe that without a sense of guilt there is no internal discipline, and without it the world would be a jungle. It is now a jungle now, and not for lack of feelings of guilt and punishment, but to a large extent "due" to them. But we will refer to this in another part of the book.

The first ideas that your parents give you, therefore, structure your learning experiences, establish the safe borders within which you can live the first few years. Without being very aware of it - since your mind, connected to the brain, is not very developed - your imagination walks along certain paths.

The imagination largely follows beliefs, though not completely, and so does emotion. To some extent there are general guidelines. A child cries when something hurts. Stop crying when the pain stops, and the emotion that accompanied the crying automatically changes for another. But if the child finds that prolonging crying after the event gets extra attention and consideration, it will begin to prolong the emotion.

From the earliest stages of his life, the child automatically compares his interpretation of reality with that of his parents. Because parents are bigger and stronger and meet so many of their needs, the child tries to match their experience with the expectations and beliefs of parents. While it is quite natural for the child to cry or feel "wrong" when hurt, a belief may so reinforce this tendency, that prolonged feelings of desolation be adopted as definitive patterns of behavior.

Behind it lies the belief that all damage is "intrinsically" a disaster. Such a belief may have as its origin, for example, a mother who cares excessively. If a mother's imagination thus obeys her belief - which she actually does - she immediately perceives a great potential danger to her child at the slightest threat. The behavior of the mother, and her telepathic communication, sends the child that message, and the message reacts to that belief.

In the conscious mind many beliefs like this lie. As the adult does not usually examine his beliefs, he may be totally unaware that he holds such an idea. But the idea itself is neither buried nor unconscious: it is simply unexamined.

So one of the most disturbing beliefs, as I mentioned earlier (in session 614), is the idea that the keys to understanding the current behavior lie buried and are usually inaccessible. This belief in itself isolates the contents of the conscious mind and prevents you from looking for the answers that are "accessible" there.

I told Jane that I had thought of using the pendulum after the session to get to the cause of the hand phenomenon, since I did not want to interrupt the dictation of the book by asking this to Seth. (Briefly, for those who have asked me the question: the pendulum is a very old method, and I use it with excellent results in order to obtain ideo-motive-subconscious-responses on knowledge that lie outside the limits of my habitual consciousness I hold a small heavy object suspended from a thread so that it can move freely.When I ask you questions in my mind, I get affirmative or negative answers as the pendulum swings back and forth or from left to right.)

As we talked about our individual problems, Jane concluded that we had to make a decision: either we asked about them, or we continued the work of the book. Seth's two channels were wide open. Although we wanted to continue the dictation, we also wanted to know more about our personal problems. Feeling somewhat guilty, we opted for this last; But, as the material progressed, we were glad we made that decision.

This is your information.

First, everything "lies" in the conscious mind. The pendulum is a method that allows you to see the conscious material that is not organized into "recognized" beliefs. I want you to understand this, since in this way I can not personally address the reader.

Belief is conscious. You are well aware of it, but not so dependent on it. The belief is that you do not communicate well with your mother.

Seth was absolutely right. And, speaking of seeing the proverbial light, I suddenly saw the belief that had been in front of my noses all the time. Remember that Jane and I had spent the weekend visiting my mother, my brother, and her family.

It depends on another belief, that this lack of communication is a bad thing, and that you deserve a punishment for bad things. When writing this book you are helping us communicate with many people, while at the same time you think you can not communicate with your mother.

These beliefs together, therefore, cause a tension in the writing hand. You simply want to express through the sessions these ideas that you believe so much in, but you feel or feel guilty for doing so because you can not convey those ideas to your mother.

Thus, conflicting beliefs cause difficulties in the method, and the hand does not automatically move with the gracefulness it should. You also "believe" that you communicate much better through writing than orally. You often write notes to Ruburt, with simple and beautiful messages that you find difficult to convey orally "due" to your belief.

So tonight you feel guilty because you communicate with others by transcribing the notes, while you think you could not do it with your mother verbally. In this way the method is affected by your beliefs.

I'm telling you all this to show you how beliefs work.

You also "believe" (you could underline every "believe" as I speak to you) that your main method of communication is painting, and instead the form of diffusion you use now is to take notes.

This has happened because two current secondary beliefs related to the experiences of the weekend have come into conflict. One, you should be in Rochester, like you were, talking to your mother. And the second, that you should have been here, communicating with the world in general through your painting.

Instead, on your return you are communicating with the world with your notes, a choice you made consciously, but not entirely about the other contents of your conscious mind, and the beliefs "in conflict." Do you understand?

These beliefs are very obvious when I point them out, but their opposite nature facilitated confusing data to the body's conscience: writing and not writing.

Also involved is the idea of ​​punishment, the belief in it. Anyway, you do what you decided to do - remember the session - but punishing yourself with your personal interpretation.

Your mother's "situation", according to "you believe", implies a lack of communication. Your brother explained that speech sometimes fails. Well, your conscious interpretation of an appropriate self-punishment was the lack of mobility in the hand. I try to express this in simple terms so that you can follow the relationship of the elements.

Since you think that your method of expression is mainly through your hand when you paint, and you think that of your mother is oral, you altered the movement of the hand, and not, for example, your speech. Can you consciously follow this?

At certain times you made those choices consciously. You did not realize it, but they existed as conscious points of full consciousness and choice. Do you have any question?

Well, Ruburt has been busy recently reorganizing some of the beliefs he wants to get rid of. It has been releasing them, so that they are spinning in their consciousness. They are becoming aware of them, and they are no longer as invisible as they were. He is facing many of them for the first time.

Both should be equally fully aware of the beneficial ideas and their importance in your lives, and this will be a theme of the book.

Tonight Ruburt was in a way exhausted to compare your beliefs together with those of your brother's family, to compare their bodily beliefs with those of those people and to see how their own were harmful; But also contrasted their personal psychic and creative faculties with theirs, and that encouraged him. The result was that Ruburt felt both exhausted and excited.

I made sure he knew that I was working on our book, and some ideas about it came to his conscience. In the past, he did not believe this outpouring of thoughts possible, and therefore normally did not arise in his experience. They were there, but their belief kept them from recognizing them.

From time to time I will give secondary material to Ruburt and also to you, so that in the book there will be a chapter for your personal use. It is vitally important that you realize that you have to work with the beliefs of your mind, that real work is done there in the mind, and that you do not seek "immediate" physical results.

These will follow "with as much certainty and security" as the "bad" results did, and that should be a belief: that good results will come. But the real work is done in the mind. If you do, you can be sure of the results, but you should not try to check it constantly. Do you understand the difference?

Beliefs always change to some degree. As adults you perform many activities that you could not do as children. For example, maybe at three years of age I thought it dangerous to cross a street. Presumably you have now discarded that belief, even though it was correct and necessary when you were younger. If your mother, however, reinforced that telepathic belief and verbally with frightening images of the potential danger of crossing the street, perhaps you still carry that emotional fear, and occupy your mind in imagining possible accidents.

Emotions and imagination obey belief. When the belief fades, the emotional context changes and the imagination turns to other directions. Beliefs automatically mobilize the emotional and imaginative faculties.

Very few beliefs are only intellectual. When you examine the contents of the conscious mind, you must learn to recognize the emotional and imaginative connotations related to a given idea. There are several ways of altering the belief by replacing it with the opposite. One possibility is to generate the Opposite emotion that arises from the belief that one wants to change, and to project the imagination in the opposite direction to the one dictated by the belief. At the same time, it must be said consciously that unsatisfactory belief is only an idea about reality and not an aspect of reality itself.

You must understand that ideas are not immovable. Emotions and imagination move them in one direction or another, reinforce or deny them.

You deliberately play mind games like children, and for a while you ignore what "looks" to be physically and pretend that what you want is real.

If you are poor, pretend that you have everything you need economically, and you can imagine how you will spend the money. If you are sick, you imagine that you are healed and imagine what you would do. If you have difficulties communicating with others, you imagine doing it with ease. If you feel that your days are dark and without purpose, you imagine them satisfying and joyful.

Well, this may seem impractical, and yet in everyday life you often use your imagination and your emotions at the service of much less valuable beliefs; And the results are self-evident and, admittedly, true.

Just as the realization of unsatisfactory beliefs took a certain amount of time, so "time" may pass until you observe physical results; But the new ideas will develop and change your experience as accurately as the old ones did. The process of imagining will also confront you with other secondary ideas that may hold you back momentarily. You may see that you hold simultaneously two ideas in conflict, and both with equal force, so that you yourselves have stalled.

You may think that you have the right to health, but at the same time you believe with equal intensity that the human condition is by nature corrupt. So you will try to be healthy and not healthy at the same time, or to succeed and fail according to your individual belief system (we will see later how beliefs are usually part of a system of related ideas). This is all for tonight.

The next morning, Jane told me that she or Seth had worked on the book all night. Every time he woke up there was a dictation, and it was quite insistent, almost unpleasant at times. Jane had already had similar experiences with the book, and although it is not something that happens every night, I suggested that when she went to bed she said that she would not be aware of that kind of activity during the hours of sleep. We also agreed to ask Seth about it.




Speech Seth III
Through Jane Roberts