Seth (QUOTES & DISCUSSION)

[figgles]

Seth: It is wrong to curse a flower and wrong to curse a man. It is wrong not to hold any man in honor, and it is wrong to ridicule any man. Your must honor yourselves and see within yourselves the spirit of eternal validity. You must honor all other individuals, because within each is the spark of this validity. When you curse another, you curse yourselves, and the curse returns to you. When you are violent, the violence returns.

[Reefs]

Physical vs. nonphysical

Seth: "Do not think of the mind as a purely mental entity, and of the body as a purely physical one. Instead, think of both mind and body as continuing, interweaving processes that are mental and physical at once. Your thoughts actually are quite as physical as your body is, and your body is quite as nonphysical as it seems to you your thoughts are. You are actually a vital force, existing as a part of your environment, and yet apart from your environment at the same time.
    It is obvious that you impress a room with your characteristics as you furnish it, but you also mark what seems to be empty space in the same fashion - that is, you turn empty space into the living matter of your body without ever realizing it." (131)

[Deleted]

Dreaming or awake, we perceive only events that have meaning to us.

Jane Roberts

[Reefs]

Death is healthy

Seth: "Death itself is the delivery - a deliverer - of your species and all others. It is not negative in itself, but instead is the beginning of a different kind of positive existence. It prunes the planet, so to speak, so that there is a room and time for all, energy and food for all. Because of death, life is possible, so these two seemingly opposite qualities are simply different versions of the same phenomena.
    If death disappeared on your planet even an hour all of life would soon be threatened. And if all life possible suddenly emerged at once, then most surely all would be annihilated. We must admit, then, that death is indeed a part of life - and even so, we must say that death is healthy."

[Reefs]

Body consciousness

Seth: "You know that you have a conscious mind. You also possess what is often called the subconscious, and this merely consists of feelings, thoughts or experiences that are connected to your conscious mind, but would be considered excess baggage if you had to be aware of them all the time. You do more or less have a certain access to your own subconscious mind, however. It is perhaps easier to image a continuum of consciousness, for you have a body consciousness also, and that body consciousness is    itself made up of the individual consciousness of each molecule that forms all parts of the body itself.
    The body consciousness is highly conscious. You are simply not usually conscious of it. Reasoning takes time. It deals with problem-solving - it forms a hypothesis, and then seeks to prove it by trial and error. If you had to use that kind of process before you could move a muscle, you would get nowhere at all, of course. The other portions of your consciousness, then, deal with a kind of automatic thinking, and operate with a kind of knowledge that takes no time in your terms." (144)

[silver]

"Unfortunately, many of your public health programs, and commercial statements through the various media, provide you with mass meditations of a most deplorable kind. I refer to those in which the specific symptoms of various diseases are given, in which the individual is further told to examine the body with those symptoms in mind. I also refer to those statements that just as unfortunately specify diseases for which the individual may experience no symptoms of an observable kind, but is cautioned that these disastrous physical events may be happening despite his or her feelings of good health. Here the generalized fears fostered by religious, scientific, and cultural beliefs are often given as blueprints of diseases in which a person can find a specific focus-the individual can say: `Of course, I feel listless, or panicky, or unsafe, since I have such and such a disease.'

"The breast cancer suggestions associated with self examinations have caused more cancers than any treatments have cured. They involve intense meditation of the body, and adverse imagery that itself affects the bodily cells. Public health announcements about high blood pressure themselves raise the blood pressure of millions of television viewers.

"Your current ideas of preventative medicine, therefore, generate the very kind of fear that causes disease. They all undermine the individual's sense of bodily security and increase stress, while offering the body a specific, detailed disease plan. But most of all, they operate to increase the individual sense of alienation from the body, and to promote a sense of powerlessness and duality. Your "medical commercials" are equally disease promoting. Many, meaning to offer you relief through a product, instead actually promote the condition through suggestion, thereby generating a need for the product itself."

[silver]

"Many quite limiting ideas will pass without scrutiny under the guise of goodness. You may feel quite virtuous, for example, in hating evil, or what seems to you to be evil; but if you find yourself concentrating upon either hatred or evil, you are creating it. If you are poor you may feel quite self-righteous in your financial condition, looking with scorn upon those who are wealthy, telling yourself that money is wrong and so reinforcing the condition of poverty...If you are ill, you may find yourself dwelling upon the misery of your condition, and bitterly envying those who are healthy, bemoaning your state- and therefore perpetuating it through your thoughts...

Hatred of war will not bring peace-another example. Only love of peace will bring those conditions."

[Reefs]

Energy is love

Seth: "The universe actively loves itself and all of its parts. The world loves itself and all of its parts. It is not true that energy is neutral or indifferent. Energy is active, positive, propelled by what can almost be called an instantaneous pleasure with itself and its characteristics. Despite all concepts to the contrary, energy is indeed at its basis, love. It is also composed of highly charged consciousness that operates almost in a leapfrog fashion, with great bursts of exuberance and vitality." (149)

[Reefs]

Health and inner well-being

Seth: "The body's health is the expression of inner well-being. Poor health is an expression also, and it may serve many purposes. It goes without saying that some people become ill rather than change their activities and their environments. They may also become ill, of course, to force themselves to make such changes." (156)

[Reefs]

Body of beliefs

Seth: "Thoughts and beliefs indeed bring about physical alterations. They can even - and often do - change genetic messages. There are diseases that people believe are inherited, carried from one generation to another by a faulty genetic communication. Obviously, many people with, of example, a genetic heritage of arthritis do not come down with the disease themselves, while others indeed are so afflicted. The difference is one of belief.
    The people who have accepted the suggestion uncritically that they will inherit such a malady do then seem to inherit it: they experience the symptoms. Actually, the belief itself may have changed a healthy genetic message into an unhealthy one. Ideally, a change of belief would remedy the situation.
    Each person has an entire body of beliefs and suggestions -- and these are quite literally reflected in the physical body itself." (170)

[Reefs]

Play

Seth: "Play is a very important - indeed, vital - attribute in the development of growth and fulfillment. Children play naturally, and so do animals. For that matter, insects, birds, fish and all kinds of life play. Even ants and honeybees play. Creatures play because the activity is joyful, and spontaneous and beneficial, because it activates all portions of the organism.
    When people become ill, worried or fearful, one of the first symptoms of trouble is a lack of pleasure, a gradual discontinuance of playful action, and an over-concentration upon personal problems. In other words, illness is often first marked by a lack of zest or exuberance. This retreat from pleasure begins to cut down upon normal activity, new encounters, or explorations that might in themselves help relieve the problem by opening up new options." (172)

[Reefs]

Rewarding illness

Seth: "Many children acquire poor health habits through the well-meaning mistakes of their parents. This is particularly true when parents actually reward a child for being ill. In such cases, the ailing child is pampered far more than usual, given extra attention, offered delicacies such as ice cream, let off some ordinary chores and in other ways encouraged to think of bouts of illness as times of special attention and reward.
    I do not mean that ill children should not be treated with kindness, and perhaps a bit of special attention -- but the reward should be given for the child's recovery, and efforts should be made to keep the youngster's routine as normal as possible. Children often know quite well the reasons for some of their illnesses, for often they learn from their parents that illness can be used as a means to achieve a desired result... bouts of illness or poor health can become ways of attaining attention, favorite status, and reward." (215)

[Reefs]

Reincarnation and karma (1)

Seth: "I am not saying that the events in one life cause the events in another, but that there is an overall pattern - a bank of probable events - and that in each life each individual chooses those that suit his or her overall private purposes. Yet those lives will be connected. An individual may have a serious illness in one life. That event may turn up as one uncomfortable nightmare in another existence. In still another life, the individual might have a dear friend who suffers from the same disease. In still another existence the individual might decide to be a doctor, to seek a cause and a cure for the same disease.
    No one is fated, however, to suffer in one life for any crimes committed in another. The reasons and purposes for one's own existence in any life can be found directly in the life itself." (229)

[Reefs]

Reincarnation and karma (2)

Seth: "Many proponents of reincarnation believe most firmly that an illness in one life most frequently has its roots in a past existence, and that reincarnational regression is therefore necessary to uncover the reasons for many current illnesses or dilemmas. There is also a rather conventional stereotype version of karma that may follow such beliefs. Therefore, you may be punished in this life for errors you have committed in a past one, or you may actually be making up for a mistake made thousands of years ago. Again, all of a person's reincarnational existence are, indeed, connected -- but the events in one life do not cause the events in the next one.
    I must remind you once more that all time happens simultaneously, so the confused belief about punishment now in retaliation for past action would actually be meaningless, since in simultaneous time all actions would be occurring at once." (230)

[figgles]

"According to what you have been taught, you are composed of physical matter and cannot escape it, and this is not so. The physical matter will disintegrate but you will not. I can assure you that death is another beginning. You have lived before and you will live again, and when you are done with physical existence, you will still live. I want you to feel your own vitality. Feel it travel through the universe and know that it is not dependent upon your physical image.


What I am trying to show you is that individuality continues. Now, I have been born and died more times than I can remember. And yet, in my present state, my individuality continues. It is not my essence. It is not buried in some bovine goodness in which I must think beautiful thoughts and become lost in the beauty of the Universe. I am part of the beauty of the Universe, and as such, my individuality continues-as does your own."

Seth