Seth (QUOTES & DISCUSSION)

[Reefs]

You create your own reality

Seth: "You must realize that you do create your own reality because of your beliefs about it. Therefore, try to understand that the particular dilemma of illness is not an event forced upon you by some other agency. Realize that to some extent or another your dilemma or your illness has been chosen by you, and that this choosing has been done in bits and pieces of small, seemingly inconsequential choices. Each choice, however, has led up to your current predicament, whatever its nature." (231)

[Reefs]

Living at cross purposes (1)

Seth: "We are not speaking of physical health alone, but of mental, spiritual and emotional health as well. You are not healthy, for example, no matter how robust your physical condition, if your relationships are unhealthy, unsatisfying, frustrating, or hard to achieve. Whatever your situation is, it is a good idea to ask yourself what would you do if you were free of it. An alcoholic's wife might wish with all her heart that her husband stop drinking - but if she suddenly asked herself what she would do, she might - surprisingly enough - feel a tinge of panic. On examination of her own thoughts and beliefs, she might well discover that she was so frightened of not achieving her own goals that she actually encouraged her husband's alcoholism, so that she would not have to face her own 'failure.'" (233)

[Reefs]

Living at cross purposes (2)

Seth: "In fact, you may discover not just one you, but several you's, so to speak, each pursuing certain purposes, and you may find out furthermore that some such purposes cancel others out, while some are diametrically opposed to each other. Such cross purposes, of course, can lead to mental, spiritual, physical and emotional difficulties. Many people believe that it is dangerous to make themselves known, to express their own ideas and abilities. Such individuals may be highly motivated, on the other hand, to become accomplished in some art or profession or other field of activity. In such cases you have two cross purposes operating - the desire to express oneself, and the fear of doing so.
    If both beliefs are equally dominant and vital, then the situation becomes quite serious. Such individuals may try 'to get ahead' on the one hand, in society or business or in the arts or sciences, only to find themselves taking two steps backward for every step they take forward. In other words, they will encounter obstructions that are self-generated. If such a person begins to succeed, then he or she is forcibly reminded of the equally dominant need for lack of success - for again, the person believes that self-expression is necessary and desirable while also being highly dangerous, and thus to be avoided." (236)

[Reefs]

Living at cross purposes (3)

Seth: "Dilemmas result in many ways. The person might succeed financially, only to make a serious or faulty business judgment, thus losing the financial benefits. Another person might express the same dilemma through the body itself, so that 'getting ahead' was equated with physical mobility - so that it seemed that physical mobility, while so desired, was still highly dangerous. Such reasoning sounds quite outlandish, of course, to most individuals, but the person in question, say with a disease like arthritis, or some other motion-impairing ailment, might ask themselves the question 'What would I do if I were free of the condition?'
    Like the alcoholic's wife mentioned earlier, such a person might suddenly feel struck by a sense of panic, rather than relief, thus experiencing for the first time the fear of motion that underlay the problem. Yet why should motion be feared? Because so many individuals have been taught that power or energy is wrong, destructive, or sinful, and therefore to be punished. Often playful, rambunctious children are told not to be showoffs, or not to express their normal exuberance. Religions stress the importance of discipline, sobriety, and penance. All of these attitudes can be extremely detrimental, and along with other beliefs are responsible for a goodly number of spiritual, physical, mental, and emotional problems." (236)

[Reefs]

You are nourished by your beliefs

Seth: "The ideas you have play a large role in the way the body handles its nutrients, and utilizes its health and vitality. If you believe that the body is somehow evil, you may punish it by nearly starving it to death, even though your diet might be considered normal by usual standards. For it is possible for your ideas to cause chemical reactions that impede your body's ability to accept nourishment. If you believe that the body is evil, the purest health-food diet will or may do you little good at all, while if you have a healthy desire and respect your physical body, a diet of TV dinners, and even of fast foods, may well keep you healthy and nourished.
    If we are talking about health, it is to your beliefs that we must look. You have the most efficient and beautiful physical organs, the most elegant joints and appendages, the most vibrant lungs and the most exquisite of senses. It is up to you to form a body of beliefs that is worthy of your physical image -- for you are nourished by your beliefs, and those beliefs can cause your daily bread to add to your vitality, or to add to your cares and stress." (259)

[Reefs]

Every death is suicide

Seth: "In nearly all matters of poor health, or unfortunate living conditions or mental or physical stress, there exists a strong tinge of denial, fear and repression. These are seen at their most severe and their most obvious where suicide is involved - particularly in the suicide of the young. At one time or another most people consider the possibility of their own death. That is a quite natural reaction to the conditions of life. With some people, however, the idea of death seems to grow obsessive, so that it is felt to be the one escape from life's problems. It may even achieve an allure in some people's minds.
    The propelling force in all of existence is the desire to be, however -  the impetus toward expression, development and fulfillment. Some people who consider suicide believe in life after death, and some do not - and in the deepest of terms all deaths are somewhat suicidal. Physical life must end of it is to survive. There are certain conditions, however, that promote suicidal activity, and the termination of one's own life has been held in great disrepute by many religions and societies, though not in all.
    First of all, let me make it clear that no one is 'damned' for committing suicide. There are no particular 'penalties'... Nature does not know damnation, and damnation has no meaning in the great realm of love in which all existence is couched." (267)

[Reefs]

Letting go (1)

Seth: "To 'let go' is to trust the spontaneity of your own being, to trust your own energy and power and strength, and to abandon yourself to the energy of your own life. The word 'abandon' itself may strike some readers as particularly strong, but each element of nature abandons itself to the life-form. So does each atom of your body. To abandon yourself, then, to the power of your own life, is to rely upon the great forces within and yet beyond nature that gave birth to the universe and to you. One of the very first steps toward mental, physical, emotional and spiritual health is precisely that kind of abandonment, that kind of acceptance and affirmation. The will to live is also inbred into each element of nature, and if you trust your own spontaneity, then that will to be is joyfully released and expressed through all of your activities. It can also quite literally wash depression and suicidal tendencies away." (269)

[figgles]

"The soul is not something waiting for you at death, nor is it something you must save or redeem. You cannot lose it. It is indestructible. The fulfillment of the soul is not dependent upon arrivals at any points, spiritual or otherwise. Your own personality as you know it, that portion of you that you consider most precious, most uniquely you, will never be destroyed or lost.

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.

What you call death is rather your choice to focus in other dimensions and realities. You do not acquire a 'spirit' at death. You are one, now! You adopt a body as a space traveler wears a space suit, and for much the same reason."

[figgles]

"Although you are an individual and with free will, you are also part of another you. You simply don't identify with it now. In their own ways, other portions of your multidimensional being are involved in experiences, then, somewhat similar to your own, though
on the outside the situation may be completely different. Their progress lies latent within the window of the moment point — the moment point.

The adventures of your simultaneous selves, again, appear as traces in your own consciousness, as ideas or daydreams or disconnected images, or sometimes even in sudden intuitions. They can be drawn upon, drawn out, to help you understand current problems. This does not mean that you will necessarily have a flood of reincarnational information, instant intuitive recognition of "past" lives, or experience any such intrusive data. It does mean that in your own life such information automatically appears in intimate ways, but couched within the framework of your own comprehensions, even passing
unobtrusively through your conscious thoughts.

Many artists unknowingly paint portraits of their simultaneous
selves. Many mothers find themselves feeling younger than their offspring
at times, or about to call some of their children by different
names. Impulses to try activities you have not tried before may indeed
be messages from other portions of your own being."

Seth

[Reefs]

Letting go (2)

Seth: "This feeling of abandoning oneself to the power and force of one's own life does not lead to a mental segregation, but instead allows the self to sense the part that it plays in the creative drama of the universe. Such understandings often cannot be verbalized. They are instead perceived or experienced in bursts of pure knowing or sudden comprehension. The more fully you live, the more of the seemingly hidden "mysteries of the universe" begin to appear. They do not necessarily make themselves known with great clamor or fanfare, but suddenly the most innocuous, innocent birdsong or the sight of a leaf might reveal knowledge of the profoundest nature. It is ironic, then, that many people who seek to discover the "hidden" mysteries of nature ignore nature itself, or consider the physical body as gross or somehow composed of lesser vibrations." (269)

[figgles]

"The eating of meat without doubt focuses the physical mechanism closely to the physical system. There is nothing wrong with this. If you are trying to develop inner abilities however, and if you wish to allow yourself a mobility of focus, then moderation in this respect must be used."

[figgles]

"Each identity has free will and chooses its environment as a physical stance in space and time. Those involved in a given century are working on particular problems and challenges. Various races do not simply 'happen,' and diverse cultures do not just appear. The greater self 'divides' itself, manifesting in flesh as several individuals, with entirely different backgrounds, yet each embarked on the same kind of creative challenge."

[figgles]

"You usually think . . . that your feelings about a given event are primarily reactions to the event itself. It seldom occurs to you that the feelings themselves might be primary, and that the particular event was somehow a response to your emotions, rather than the other way around... You are... literally hypnotized into believing that your feelings arise in response to events. Your feelings, however, cause the events you perceive. Secondarily, you do of course then react to those events."

[Reefs]

The reality that you know

Seth: "Experience is the product of the mind, the spirit, conscious thoughts and feelings, and unconscious thoughts and feelings. These together form the reality that you know. You are hardly at the mercy of a reality, therefore, that exists apart from yourself, or is thrust upon you. You are so intimately connected with the physical events composing your life experience that often you cannot distinguish between the seemingly material occurrences and the thoughts, expectations and desires that gave them birth.
    You see and feel what you expect to see and feel. The world as you know it is a picture of your expectations. The world as the race of man knows it is the materialization en masse of your individual expectations. As children come from you physical tissue, so is the world your joint creation." (session 609)

[Reefs]

The world as it appears to you

Seth: "The living picture of the world grows within the mind. The world as it appears to you is like a three-dimensional painting in which each individual takes a hand. Each color, each line that appears within it has first been painted within a mind, and only then does it materialize without. In this case, however, the artists themselves are a portion of the painting, and appear within it. There is no effect in the exterior world that does not spring from an inner source. There is no motion that does not first occur within the mind.
    Your eye knows it sees, though it cannot see itself except through the use of reflection. In the same way the world as you see it is a reflection of what you are, a reflection not in glass but in three dimensional reality. You project your thoughts, feelings and expressions outward, then you perceive them as the outside reality. When it seems to you that others are observing you, you are observing yourself from the standpoint of your own projections." (session 610)