SESSION 614
Now: Later we will discuss some of the reasons for your beliefs, but for now I simply want you to recognize them. I am going to list some limiting false beliefs. If you find yourself agreeing with any of them, then recognize this as an area in which you must personally work.
1. Life is a valley of sorrows.
2. The body is inferior. As a vehicle of the soul it is automatically degraded, tinged. You may feel that the flesh is inherently bad or evil, that its appetites are wrong. Christians may find the body deplorable, thinking that the soul descended into it — “descent” automatically meaning the change from a higher or better condition to one that is worse. Followers of Eastern religions often feel it their duty, also, to deny the flesh, to rise above it, so to speak, into a state where nothing is desired. (“Emptiness” in Taoism, for instance.) Using a different vocabulary, they still believe that earth experience is not desirable in itself.
3. I am helpless before circumstances that I cannot control.
4. I am helpless because my personality and character were formed in infancy, and I am at the mercy of my past.
5. I am helpless because I am at the mercy of events from past lives in other incarnations, over which I now have no control. I must be punished, or I am punishing myself for unkindnesses done to others in past lives. I must accept the negative aspects of my life because of my karma.*
*In Hinduism and Buddhism, karma is thought of as the total moral sum of an individual’s acts in any one life — thus determining the person’s fate or destiny in the next. Seth sees reincarnational lives as all existing at once, so there is constant give-and-take among them. A “future” life, then, can affect a “past” one, so karma as it is usually considered does not apply.
6. People are basically bad, and out to get me.
7. I have the truth and no one else has. Or, my group has the truth and no other group has.
8. I will grow frailer, sicker, and lose my powers as I grow old.
9. My existence is dependent upon my experience in flesh. When my body dies my consciousness dies with it.
Now: That was a rather general list of false beliefs. Now here is a more specific list of more intimate beliefs, any of which you may have personally about yourself.
1. I am sickly, and always have been.
2. There is something wrong with money. People who have it are greedy, less spiritual than those who are poor. They are unhappier, and snobs.
3. I am not creative. I have no imagination. Next: I can never do what I want to do. Next: People dislike me. Next: I am fat. (“That would be number 6. “)
Then 7. I always have bad luck.
(12:15.) These are all beliefs held by many people. Those who have them will meet them in experience. Physical data will always seem to reinforce the beliefs, therefore, but the beliefs formed the reality. We are going to attempt to knock down such limiting concepts.
First of all, you must realize that no one can change your beliefs for vou. nor can they be forced upon you from without. You can indeed change them for yourself, however, with knowledge and application.
Look about you. Your entire physical environment is the materialization of your beliefs. Your sense of joy, sorrow, health or illness — all of these are also caused by your beliefs. If you believe that a given situation should make you unhappy, then it will, and the unhappiness will then reinforce the condition.
Within you is the ability to change your ideas about reality and about yourself, to create a personal living experience that is fulfilling to yourself and others. I would like you to write down your beliefs about yourself as you become aware of them. Later you can use this list in a way that you do not now suspect.
SETH Book : The Nature of Personal Reality 