Mike's commentary · The Nature of Personal Reality, Chapter 15

The "Introduction" and "Chapter Highlights" for this chapter were summarized by an AI editor based on the main text below; they are not things Mike said during the lecture. The main text comes from Mike's commentary, and the blockquotes are Seth's original words (the portions Mike read aloud).

Introduction

This chapter explains that limitations come mainly from personal beliefs. Beliefs are like a radio station, receiving only the probabilities that match their frequency; the present is the point of power, and changing beliefs can reorganize the past and influence the future. The way to release limitations is: expand beliefs, list known potentials, resolve to develop them, and use imagination to visualize the desired state as already having happened, while at the same time pairing this with symbolic actions to form a smooth stream of consciousness. Do not look for flaws in the past to reinforce negative experiences; instead, reorganize the past into a positive resource. Hypnosis is used to illustrate how focused attention and belief can directly alter experience.

Key Points of This Chapter

• Conscious beliefs determine personal experience, and limiting beliefs block out other possibilities.
• The present is the point of power; changing beliefs can reorganize the past and influence the future.
• Focus attention on the ability or state you want, visualize it as already happening, rather than dwelling on deficiencies or the fact that it has not yet manifested.
• Changing beliefs needs to be paired with symbolic physical action and the formation of a smooth stream of consciousness.
• Do not search for the roots of problems in the past in a way that reinforces negative experience; the past can be reorganized into a positive resource.

Main Text

Beliefs Determine Experience

Since your conscious beliefs determine those unconscious processes that bring you your personal experience. This sentence is also quite convoluted: your conscious beliefs determine what kind of personal experience is brought to you, but the process by which that experience is brought into your actual life is itself operating unconsciously. Although it is your conscious beliefs that make the determination, in the specific process of operation, in the process by which this belief takes effect, if you are not carefully observing, then this process of taking effect is unconscious—as far as you are concerned, you cannot perceive it.

Your first step is to expand those beliefs. The more your beliefs expand, the larger the scope of your beliefs, the more possibilities can be brought into your actual life. If your beliefs have too many restrictions, then many things that could have happened in your life are blocked by you.

The ideas given to you in this book should already be teaching you to do this to some degree—do what? To expand your beliefs. Remove those restrictive beliefs, let your beliefs have fewer restrictions, and with fewer restrictions, you are expanding the scope of your beliefs.

List Your Potentials

Within your own subjective reality are the traces of all those roads not taken and all those abilities not used.

What is meant by subjective reality is that within your state of conscious awareness, within the state that you yourself can feel, you can discover the existence of those possibilities. What kind of possibilities? Roads not walked, life trajectories not chosen, and those potentials you have not brought into play. These things leave traces in your life.

You may think of yourself primarily as a parent, or primarily from the perspective of work or career. Now, suddenly, do your best to forget your normal, familiar way of looking at yourself, and reconsider your own identity.

This is still asking you to expand your beliefs, asking you not to confine yourself to your usual perception of yourself—that is, to release your persona from its normal state.

Write down or list all the physical and mental abilities you know you have, whether or not they have been developed, and all those inclinations toward specific activities, as well as those very distinct inclinations.

He is asking you to write down or list all the physical and mental abilities you know you have—whether or not they have been developed, as long as you have them and you can feel them, write them down. And also all those inclinations toward specific activities, such as wanting to travel, wanting to do certain things, wanting to do handicrafts, wanting to learn a musical instrument—those special inclinations; or wanting to learn a foreign language, wanting to travel abroad, study abroad, pursue further education, or do nothing at all and just do some things you truly want to do. Or things that have only shown a small hint of themselves, and many things you have always wanted to do but never did, always wanted to realize but never realized. Maybe you want to change careers, or you are interested in Chinese traditional medicine and want to learn acupuncture, want to learn herbal medicine, or want to learn some knowledge of modern physics—all of these are fine.

Those represent the various possible characteristics, and from among them, you choose the part that you develop into your primary specific interest.

You choose from among them which ones you want to become the things you are interested in, and let them be realized in your life.

Therefore, from these attributes, you have chosen what you now consider to be the most basic reality.

Your present reality is your basic reality right now. Our current life, our daily life, is all selected from among those listed above.

If you followed any one of those directions, it could enrich the existence you know, and in turn open up other possibilities that you do not now see.

You can open up another new possibility related to it through a new possibility. Maybe you just want to go out and travel, but in the process of traveling, you may receive some inspiration and discover interests in certain fields.

The main image you hold of yourself, to a large degree, also closes your mind to these other possible interests and identities.

When you identify too strongly with one identity, you close off the possibilities of other identities and other possibilities.

If you think of yourself as a multidimensional self, you will realize that you have more ways of expression and achievement than you know.

If you yourself believe you are a multidimensional being, then you cannot possibly have only one option. You yourself are a you living simultaneously in multiple times and spaces, so you certainly have many possible characteristics, careers, or interests that are different from the present ones.

These possible achievements will remain latent forever unless your consciousness decides to bring them into existence.

If you do not bring them in, then all those possible yous in the multidimensional worlds, all those latent abilities and latent identities, will not be activated. They will remain latent forever, until you want to activate them and bring them into your present actual life.

The Power of Making a Decision

No matter what talents you feel you have, they will only be developed when you decide to develop them.

Your talents can only be developed when you decide to develop them. The act of making a decision then sets in motion unconscious mechanisms, and this is very important. When you make a decision to develop a certain talent, this act of making a decision will activate an unconscious mechanism—a mechanism you cannot perceive. So you may want to ask, why is it that just because I made a decision to develop a certain ability, it can be realized? Because this process itself is something your consciousness cannot capture.

As a person, regardless of health, wealth, or environment, you have a rich variety of possible experience from which to choose.

No matter what your current situation is, whether you are healthy or not, whether you have money or not, or whether your surrounding environment is favorable or unfavorable to you, you have a very rich variety of possible experience. Everyone has this. Do not let yourself be limited by your present actual environment; you still have many other very rich possibilities.

You must consciously understand this, and choose the direction for your own life.

You must choose the direction for your own life—you must choose your own life. The steering wheel is in your own hands; you must decide where to go. Just as in the previous chapter—Chapter Fourteen—his heading was always "Which You, Which World." What he means to ask is: which you do you want to become? In what kind of world do you want to live? It is a question, but actually he is trying to tell you, to wake you up. Therefore, the direction of your life must be decided by yourself.

Even if you say, "I am willing to leave it to fate, I do not make decisions, I go with the flow, I am a laid-back youth, I do not make any decisions, this is my life principle"—fine, then you are making a conscious decision. The very act of wanting to leave it to fate is itself a decision. If you say, "I do not have the ability to direct my own life, I cannot do it, I cannot decide, I am like being carried forward by the torrent of the times, I am swept up in it"—he says this is also making such a choice. However, this kind of situation is a restrictive choice, because you are very passive, and you have given yourself the conclusion that "I have no ability."

The paths of experience are by no means fixed. There is no road that cannot lead to other roads. At any time, you can have access to the deep veins of possible action.

How you want to walk, what experiences you want to have—this path is absolutely not fixed. "All roads lead to Rome." Every road is connected to every other. At any time you can have access to the deep veins of possible action—the information or traces hidden beneath the surface. He calls these "deep veins." Possible actions are always present around you, and they are constantly giving you hints.

Bringing into Existence Through Imagination

Your imagination is extremely valuable. Allow yourself to be open to such paths, and then you can use imagination to help you bring these into existence.

How can it be realized? You say, I have already thought it through, I have already decided, so how can I become those possible selves, how can I bring those possibilities back into reality? He says, use what? Use imagination to help you bring these into existence. So when you get to this point, you will understand that what he is asking you to do is actually very simple—just use your imagination.

If you are poor, you have chosen that one possibility of poverty from among many possible realities that do not involve poverty.

If you are poor, then among those options of "not being poor," one of them is certainly poverty, and you chose that one. And those possibilities that "do not involve poverty" are still there.

If you chose illness, then there is another possible reality in which you chose health and did not become ill.

If you chose illness, then there is another possible reality in which you chose health and did not become ill. If you bring that possibility into your present actual life, you will become healthy. This content was already discussed very clearly in Chapter Fourteen—that "which you, which world."

If you are lonely, it means there are some possible friends whom you refused to meet in the past.

You are lonely because you did not want to meet more friends, but they are still there waiting for you. These are some examples Seth gives you.

Therefore, in your mind, visualize those possible abilities or events as having already happened.

What should you normally do? Visualize in your mind. Visualize those possible abilities—your potentials—or possible events. You must visualize them as having already happened—this is the perfect tense. This is the key: you cannot think, "I still want this thing, I want to realize this thing, I hope it is like this"—that is wrong. When you think "I want something, I hope for something"—"I want to be richer, I want to become more handsome, more beautiful, more pretty"—none of these are right. You cannot think in terms of "you want," because that implies you do not yet have it. You can only think of them as already realized: "I am rich, I am handsome, I am beautiful, I am well-liked, I have many friends, I am confident, I am capable, I possess this kind of strength." These are what you should think, not "I want something"—this is where many people go wrong.

So in the book Conversations with God¹, it tells you: do not pray. Every time you are with God, or with your Buddha, or with your so-called guru, or your higher self, when you are meditating, do not pray—praying again implies that you have not yet received those things. You should give thanks and appreciate. How to give thanks? Give thanks that I have such a very healthy body, give thanks that I have such a present state of life, I give thanks that I am a person living in great abundance, a person of great fullness, and so on. And you should also appreciate—appreciate this ability of your own, appreciate this feeling and state of your body's health, appreciate your good mood, appreciate your abundant mindset, appreciate your life, appreciate the people around you, appreciate the things that happen, appreciate a flower you see around you, a leaf. The meaning of appreciation is that you already possess it, you are playing with it, you are savoring it—you can only speak of appreciation after you have possessed it. This mindset is different.

When you do this, the intensity of your desire will bring them into your experience.

When you visualize those possible abilities and events as having already happened, this is the one thing you need to do. When you do this, the intensity of your desire will bring them—those possible abilities or events—into your actual life. It is that simple. As for how they are brought in, you do not need to worry about it. If you want to study it, as a theoretical scholar wanting to study Seth, or wanting to teach this knowledge to others, you can study it; if you are just an ordinary practitioner, you do not need to worry at all about how it is realized. This process of realization and manifestation can be said to be extremely simple, or it can be said to be extremely complex—this process from the invisible world to the visible world.

Possibilities and Neural Structure

Again, there are no boundaries around the self. There are indeed many probable yous, and you can draw upon their abilities, just as they draw upon yours in their own way, for you are all intimately connected.

There are no boundaries around you; there is nothing limiting you. There are indeed many other probable yous, and you can draw upon their abilities, just as they draw upon your abilities in their own way, because you are all intimately connected. Do not feel embarrassed saying, "I am drawing upon his abilities"—they are also drawing upon your abilities. So when you become excellent, they become excellent too, and they also gain many benefits from you.

You must realize that you are indeed a probable you. Your experience is the result of beliefs, and your neurological structure makes a certain focus inevitable.

You must understand—you are indeed a probable you. All the experiences and feelings in your ordinary life, all the things you go through, are the results brought about by your beliefs. And your neurological structure makes it so that among your many possibilities, whichever one your conscious focus is fixed upon will manifest and become an inevitable result, happening in your world.

Therefore, other experiences that are contrary to your conscious assumptions are maintained as latent.

Those ideas, those experiences, those feelings that are contrary to your conscious thoughts still exist. They are merely latent—latent in this world of yours, but already happening in other worlds. For you, they are latent.

When you change beliefs, any probable self can, within certain limits, be realized.

When you change those latent experiences that are contrary to your present beliefs, they can be realized. But why does he say "within certain limits"? For example: you were born disabled in this lifetime, you came without a left hand. Then through such methods, in your present time and space, it is impossible for you to grow a left hand. Although in other times and spaces, in other possibilities, you are completely whole and do not lack a left hand—yet in your present time and space, no matter how you imagine, no matter how you push this energy and this ability to the extreme, you cannot grow a left hand. This is what "within certain limits" means—you are inevitably subject to the restrictions of your physical world and the natural world.

Session 656

That part of this session is finished, because this session is a half-session, very short. Let us continue with the next session below it, which is Session 656 of the book, Monday evening, April 16, 1973.

Every Event Was Once Probable

What you must understand is this: in each life, every event was once probable. Then, within a given range of action, you choose the portion that will be physically materialized.

He is still repeating some earlier points, varying the approach, coming at it from different angles. What is it you need to understand? In every one of your incarnations, every event was once probable -- all these possibilities could have happened. Then, within a specific range of action, you choose which thing to let materialize. Although all of them could have been materialized, you choose which one gets materialized.

This operates in the same way both individually and collectively.

Your personal reality works this way, and a collective reality also works this way -- it is the same. A collective choice is also a kind of probability. Those things that were not chosen also exist in another probability, in another time and space. When you change the collective belief, you also bring new probabilities into your collective experience.

The Example of the Thief

Suppose your house is burglarized today. Yet from yesterday's standpoint, this theft was only one of countless probable events.

He gives an example. From yesterday's standpoint, this event did not necessarily have to happen; it was only one probability. He chose this example because it involves more than one person -- it involves the victim and two thieves, so these two people can also be considered a small collective, and the nature is the same.

Nevertheless, through your conscious thoughts, you attracted such an event and brought it from probability into reality.

Seth begins telling you to look at the problem from this angle -- how this probability came about. But this viewpoint is one that 99.99 percent of ordinary people cannot accept: my house was burglarized, and it turns out I attracted it myself? They will not accept it. They can only admit they were unlucky; they will not admit that they themselves created such a fact.

The event will be a focusing of energy that is then transformed into action, and it is naturally brought about by a belief.

First this matter is a gathering of energy, and only then can it become an action.

You may believe that human nature is basically evil, or you may believe that no one is safe from attack by others, and that people are primarily driven by greed.

Within your belief system, you may believe that human nature is basically evil, or you may believe that no one can be exempt from being attacked by others -- that in the course of life, it is possible to be robbed by someone. And that people are primarily driven by greed -- this is one of your beliefs. Because you hold the above beliefs, the event of your house being burglarized comes about. How does it happen?

Such beliefs will then attract their own reality.

What kind of reality? If you believe you have anything worth losing -- if your house is burglarized, there must be something worth stealing. If your house was completely bare, you would never worry about being burglarized; you would not even need to lock the door. You must have some things you are afraid of having stolen.

Then you automatically believe that another person will take them away from you.

When you have some things you feel might be stolen by someone, you have this thought: "I must not lose this; I should lock the door so no one steals it." The moment you think that, are you not automatically believing one thing -- that there is another person who will always be thinking about taking it away? If you did not have this thought, why would you worry about being robbed? It is like the naive brother Wang Baoqiang in the movie A World Without Thieves²: I just do not believe there are thieves.

So they try to do so as best they can.

That is, there are thieves -- there will be other people who steal it away. So those who want to take it will try every means to do so.

You send out a signal in your own way.

What kind of signal? A signal sent precisely to just such a person -- you send a telepathic signal to the thief.

On a basic level, your firm beliefs will be quite similar.

Within society's larger belief system, we all firmly believe: we have things that can be stolen. This is one of our firm, resolute beliefs, and this belief is so resolute because you have been indoctrinated with it since childhood. So if you say "I do not have this belief," that is impossible -- everyone has this belief to a greater or lesser degree. Therefore, it is normal that you get robbed at some point in this life.

But one person sees himself as the victim, while the other sees himself as the aggressor, even though they respond differently to the same belief.

One person sees himself as the victim, and the other sees himself as the thief -- even though they respond differently to the same belief. What belief? The pile of beliefs he mentioned above, that "firm belief." This belief exists in the vast majority of our real lives.

Yet both of you are necessary if a crime of that nature is to be committed.

If the theft happens -- assuming it is a criminal act -- then the one who caused the crime is not only the thief; you also have a share. Both of you are necessary. You are also one of the causes of the theft -- you cannot exactly call it being an accomplice, but you could count as an assist.

The beliefs of both of you have been rationalized in practical life.

Both have been rationalized -- you were robbed, and the thief succeeded; both were rationalized in practical life. This further validates your beliefs, and actually strengthens them: you will think, "There really are thieves," and the thief says, "Right, his house really did have things worth stealing."

The fear of thieves attracts thieves.

You are afraid of thieves, and your fear of thieves attracts the arrival of thieves.

If, however, you believe that people are evil, then you will often be unable to examine it as a belief; you will take it as a condition of reality.

If you believe that people are evil, you do not think of it as a belief; you think of it as a fact, a reality -- everyone is evil. When you think this way, you cannot examine it -- you will not treat it as a belief; you will perceive it as a fact. What is a fact? Only something that cannot be changed can be called a fact. A belief can be changed. So you will treat "everyone is evil" as a fact.

The Process of Belief Materialization

All of your present experience is drawn from probable realities. In your lifetime, the occurrence of any event must come through your animal nature and your innate perception of time, which is largely a part of your neurological structure.

In your life, the occurrence of anything comes through your animal nature -- our biological, physical nature -- and your perception of time. In our physical world, any event depends on time; it must happen at a specific time. That is largely a part of your neurological structure, because our perception of time is determined by our neurological structure. If we did not have this kind of neurological structure, our perception of time would also be different. So when you enter a higher dimension -- whether in dreams, or when entering some other states -- when you detach from your physical nervous system, you detach from the limitations of time and space. Time, for you, is part of your neurological structure.

Usually, therefore, there is a delay, a time lag, during which your belief brings about the concrete realization.

When you draw experience from probable realities, there is a delay in this process. Why? Because you yourself are a physical being, living in a world limited by time and space. Your materialization is not instantaneous -- although in the multidimensional world it is an instantaneous materialization, in this physical world it is delayed. The so-called lag is a process of time. During this time, your belief brings about the concrete realization -- its materialization requires time, rather than happening immediately as you might think.

A Steady Stream of Consciousness

When you try to change your firm beliefs -- the purpose being to change your experience -- you must first stop the momentum you have already established. You are changing the information, while the body is accustomed to responding smoothly and without hesitation to another set of beliefs.

What does "firm beliefs" mean? Those beliefs that everyone accepts -- the example just given above, the house being burglarized, is mostly because such beliefs attracted the thief. The overall belief of the whole society is a solid foundation. When you try to change these beliefs, the purpose being to change your entire life experience, you must first stop your current momentum.

What he means is: we are still greatly influenced by the body's inertia. When you learn a new set of beliefs -- "If my house is burglarized, it is because I feared thieves, and that is why I attracted the thief" -- and then today you begin changing your belief, saying, "I will no longer think this way, I will no longer be afraid, I will no longer fear thieves." At this point you will discover a problem: although you understand it theoretically and rationally, in practical life you still fear thieves. You still lock the door tightly every night when you sleep. Do you dare not lock your door tonight when you sleep? If you dare to do it, that proves you do not fear thieves -- but you do not dare. Why do you not dare? Because your body will continue the old habit; it will smoothly, naturally, automatically lock the door. You will also find a pile of excuses, saying, "There is no way I can leave this door unlocked; the security door locks automatically when it closes" -- you will find ways to explain your behavior. So fundamentally, what is going on? That firm belief has not yet been changed; only at the level of your conscious mind do you feel it has been changed. But your body is still very honest, still acting according to the old belief system.

This is why many people say, "You say beliefs create reality, you say the law of attraction, so why is it not working in my life?" Examine carefully the actual state and actions in your life -- are you acting according to the new belief, or are you continuing according to the old belief, according to the body's inertia?

It has a steady and smooth stream.

He tells you that only this steady and smooth stream can materialize. Simply thinking in your head -- "I want such and such, my belief is very strong at this moment, right now I no longer believe in thieves, I no longer fear thieves" -- this is only a momentary phenomenon; it is not smooth enough, not stable enough. So you must remember: if you want things to materialize, if you want your new belief to take effect, if you want your new belief to bring about changes in the probable events of your life, there must be a steady, smooth stream -- a stream of consciousness. That is, your consciousness is very smooth and stable; you are firm and without doubt. Just as you previously believed that thieves definitely exist in this world, at this moment you firmly believe that there are no thieves in this world -- if you firmly believe such an idea, it will happen.

The reason we usually cannot do it -- the reason most of us cannot realize that beliefs create reality -- is that we cannot provide a stable, smooth stream of consciousness. We often doubt, hesitate, and do not dare to act.

In actual practice, you can boldly imagine: why should you fear thieves? Let me use mainland China as an example. In mainland China, if you live in a fairly large city, basically thieves are already gone, already extinct -- this profession is almost nonexistent now. Because of how complete the surveillance is now, how developed the Skynet system is, plus every person's mobile phone location signal, smart facial recognition, and its link to ID cards. The Skynet system can locate a person within six seconds; as long as you have been active in this society, cameras can project images of your activities directly onto a large screen. If you directly input a person's mobile phone number or ID information, it can be found in the database.³ If you believe this, if you feel that the profession of thief no longer exists, that there are no more thieves, then they really will be gone. Just like now, do you still believe anyone would steal a mobile phone? What could he do with a stolen phone? He cannot unlock it, cannot pass face recognition, cannot pass fingerprint recognition, and cannot open it. Stealing it is useless, and it is hard to sell. Besides, where would he go to steal a phone now? Everyone holds their phone tightly -- either listening to music, looking at the phone, or reading; the phone never leaves the hand. Unlike before, when people only took out their phones to make calls. Now people take out their phones anytime and anywhere; they even keep their phones on while eating and sleeping, so it is very hard to steal. If you can firmly believe that in this world no one really steals phones anymore, and no one breaks into houses to steal things anymore -- because stealing things will be caught by surveillance, so thieves will disappear -- if you firmly believe this, then you will not lock your door at night when you sleep. I am only saying that if you want to realize a life without thieves in your house, you must have a stable, smooth stream of consciousness.

In which, through the neurological structure, your steady stream of consciousness, conscious activity brings about practice, and establishes familiar patterns of response.

Conscious activity must be paired with corresponding activity, bringing about corresponding practice, in order to establish a set of habits -- what we call "familiar patterns of response," which are habits. In other words, if you keep wanting to be very rich, ultimately being rich is a habit, not something where you occasionally reveal your old poverty-stricken habits again. So this kind of habit must be cultivated. He tells you: through this steady stream of consciousness, in your daily activities, use this conscious steady stream to continuously cultivate a habit. Once this habit is cultivated, it can truly materialize in your life. Only this kind of thinking pattern, which has become completely natural, can materialize in your daily life.

When you try to change those conscious beliefs through effort, there must be a period of time for the neurological structure to learn to adapt to the new.

When you want to change -- this chapter, Chapter Fifteen -- tells you the specific method. Chapter Fourteen already told you the theory -- which you, which world, how these probable events materialize in reality, including the past you, the probable you, and the future you, all of which can be applied by you at this present point. This chapter tells you specifically how to apply it.

The specific method is this: when you try to change those conscious beliefs through effort -- when you say, "All right, I now recognize these problems, I want to change my belief system" -- when you want to do this, you must allow a period of time for your neurological structure to learn to adapt to this new, more preferable situation, forming a new pattern of thinking and behavior. At this point, the change in your belief will lead to a change in behavior, a change in habits, and only then will those things materialize in your life.

If the belief changes overnight, then only a relatively short time is needed. If you really can change your belief overnight, then there is no need for all this trouble. If you do not have that ability, then admit that it requires time -- cultivate the new belief-based thinking pattern, let that steady stream of consciousness become your habit, become your thinking habit, and then bring about your behavioral habit.

Beliefs as Radio Stations

In a manner of speaking, each belief can be seen as a powerful radio station, which pulls in only those signals to which it is attuned, from within the range of probabilities.

From all the radio waves in the air, each wave carries a kind of probable signal, but your radio can only receive the station that matches its frequency, while blocking out all the others. The other probabilities do not happen; only one probability is selected. All the stations in the air want to mix together -- you can imagine them as all the probabilities -- but which one you can hear, which one you can let materialize, depends on which frequency you tune to.

You set up a new station, and there may be a brief period -- this is when you are tuning the new station, during the process of adjusting the frequency -- when some static may still come through from the old station.

That is, these leakages -- he used to talk about this, this bleed through, this leakage.

Then any abilities you have can be brought in more clearly, and what is probable can become actual.

When you establish such a station, when you learn to establish a steady stream of consciousness to change your beliefs, any abilities you have can be brought in more clearly, expanded, and then what is probable can become actual.

But in such an instance, you must concentrate your attention on the attribute you want to develop, and not upon the fact that you have not used it well so far.

You must remember this point here; it is crucial: do not concentrate your attention on the fact -- this is a great challenge for you. What fact? The fact that you have not yet made good use of this ability. What should you concentrate your attention on? The attribute, the ability, you want to develop. Just as he said earlier, you must visualize that those things have already happened, you must visualize that you already possess that ability. Although that is not a fact, you have to think that way, you have to believe that way. You cannot say: the fact is I have no money, the fact is I have no leadership ability, the fact is my communication skills are poor, the fact is I am a very shy person. If you only insist that these are facts, then you cannot change anything. So the trick to change lies right here -- turn a blind eye to these facts, and focus your conscious attention on those attributes you want to possess, those qualities you want to have, those abilities you want to have, that situation you want to have.

Is this not the calibration process described in the two summaries we did after the "21-Day Abundance Journey" ended -- "The Operating Manual for Living in Abundance" and "The User Manual for the Human Machine"? That process of staying aligned with the inner self. If you understood it at the time, because it had already been simplified into a very easy-to-understand form -- here Seth is telling you the principle. Seth's characteristic is that he tells you why it is this way -- that is, you must focus your attention on that.

The Painter Analogy

A painter completes a large body of work in his lifetime, and each painting is only one materialization, one focused manifestation, of the endless, infinite possible paintings.

A painter may paint five hundred paintings in his lifetime, and any one of them is one of the possible -- possibly thousands, millions -- of paintings he could have painted. Because before the painter painted it, what this painting would look like had infinite possibilities, and the painter only chose to paint one of them.

Is not the process of painting one in which the painter paints the picture through an image in his own mind? Everyone who has painted knows that when he paints, he only has a rough idea in his mind. If he already had an image as clear as a photograph in his mind, then he would not need to paint, and there would be no creative desire. The reason he creates the painting is that he only has a rough impression in his mind; it is in the process of creation that it becomes concretized and materialized. The finished painting may surpass what was in his mind. So in this process, there may be many possible things he wanted to paint in his mind, but he only painted this one painting -- this one painting was selected from thousands of possibilities. This is one point he wants to make.

The actual work involved in selecting the material is still done according to the beliefs in the painter's conscious mind.

How does it come about? When he paints, he has a self-perception: Who am I? He certainly perceives himself as a painter. How good a painter is he? What kind of painter is he? What kind of paintings does he paint? Which school? Which tradition? Does he paint watercolor, oil, printmaking, or ink painting? What role does he occupy in the current society? What role does he want to become?

As well as aesthetic and economic values.

What meaning does this painting have? How much can it sell for economically? What value does it have aesthetically? Many artists may consider aesthetic value more; it is all possible. The above are just two random examples I gave; there are many more examples. So when a painter finally produces a painting, besides selecting one probability from thousands of possibilities to create and complete, the process is actually influenced by this whole series of belief systems behind him.

In the realization of any event in which you are involved, the situation is exactly the same as the painter painting a picture.

You create your own life -- if this painting is a work of art, if it is your life, then you are painting your own life. For the painter, the inner images are extremely important.

His inner images are extremely important; he tries to project them onto the canvas or the drawing board. They are his inner images.

He emphasizes again: each of you is your own painter; we are painting our own lives.

And your inner pictures become the models for other situations and events.

When you are painting your own life, the pictures you imagine in your mind will become models for other situations or events -- your external events are realized according to these models. Simply put, you have a small world inside you; although your inner world is small, it is infinitely vast -- it encompasses everything, covering all universes. Although it is small -- I mean small in proportion to your physical body -- its interior is infinitely large, infinitely vast. Then this small world, which opens inward onto an infinitely vast world, projects outward from your heart, like a model, and your external world is projected according to this inner world.

The content we have been discussing these past few days is precisely about how to project it, how to materialize it, and even how to change your past, and even how to change your future -- today it tells you the method of materialization.

A painter uses his training; he mixes his colors so that his painting becomes a work of art with flesh and blood.

The painter uses his experience, his aesthetic training, mixes colors, outlines lines, and then turns it into a work of art with flesh and blood.

With the images in your mind, you draw in all the appropriate emotional energy and power, and then give those images flesh and blood, turning them into the physical world.

Just as the painter turns the images in his mind into paintings, into works of art, what are you doing? You are taking the images in your own mind, drawing in the appropriate emotional energy and power, drawing them into reality, and then giving them flesh-and-blood form, turning them into the real world of your actual life. That is how it comes about.

He says, at any time you can change the picture of your life, as long as you realize that it is one of the pictures created from countless probable pictures.

At any time you can change it, just like a painter -- if he wants to change a painting, he changes it at any time. You only need to understand: the picture of your present life is only one created from countless probable pictures, and then you can choose, and swap in another picture from among the other probabilities.

Nevertheless, the unique appearance of your own probable picture will still be uniquely yours, and not someone else's.

When you swap in another one of these probable pictures, the person in that picture is still you -- just another probable you, a you in another scene. But the protagonist of that picture is always you. What he means is that the protagonist in all those probabilities is still you -- it is not that because you switch to another probability, the subject inside will change.

Health and the Application of Probabilities

In your terms, the abilities, powers, and so forth that you may want to realize are already latent, and available for your use.

The various abilities you want, the powers you want, are already latent -- remember, they are "already" latent; they are already there.

Suppose you are not healthy and wish to be healthy. If you understand the nature of probabilities, you do not need to pretend to ignore your present condition.

He is talking about how to actually carry this out, and these are all very subtle differences, things we can easily get wrong without realizing it. Suppose you are not healthy right now, but you wish you were healthy. At this point you might say: I want to be healthy, so I will go into the reality of probabilities and find a healthy one, and I will assume that I am healthy. But at this time, you do not need to pretend and ignore your present condition. If you understand the nature of probabilities, then do not ignore this present unhealthy state, or pretend that this state does not exist.

On the contrary, you must realize that it is one probable reality that you have made concrete.

Not only must you not refuse to look at this fact, you must also clearly understand: this present unhealthy state of yours is one of the realities that you yourself picked out from among the many probabilities, and then concretely manifested and concretely actualized. Only then can you recognize the facts about yourself -- through what kind of beliefs you picked it out from among those probabilities.

Why Change Beliefs Instead of Pretending You Are Not Sick

Not only can you not refuse to look at the fact in front of you, you must also clearly understand that this unhealthy state you are in right now is one of the realities that you yourself picked out from among many possibilities, and then specifically materialized and concretely actualized it. Only then can you recognize the fact about yourself -- through what kind of belief did you pick it out from those possibilities? Why did you not pick the healthy ones?

Only after you recognize this fact -- the present fact and the fact that your beliefs have produced this present result -- can you begin to bring different possibilities into the process required for physical actualization. Only after you recognize this can you replace your beliefs, replace the old beliefs with new ones, and bring that other possibility in. If you do not change your belief system and only want that possibility, you cannot get it back, and it cannot be materialized.

So The Nature of Personal Reality, in the final analysis, is fundamentally about changing your belief system. To put it simply, what is the core of this book about? It is about changing your belief system, and then everything changes along with it.

This part we just discussed is very easy to get backwards. Many people say: then we should just pretend we are not sick, pretend we are very healthy, and then we will be fine, right? No. If you think that way, then you really will not get better. If that were enough to become healthy, then many people would already be healthy -- just pretend you are not sick, how hard is that? It does not work. How can you get better? You must dig deep into your beliefs, adjust them, change them, replace them. Only by truly doing this will your illness get better. Be sure to remember this -- it is not that pretending you are not sick will make you better. That is not how this works.

The Two Statements Are Not Contradictory

By focusing your attention on what you want, you can achieve what was said above. But do not feel that there is any conflict between what you want and what you currently have, because that does not contradict the other point.

Here he is saying it from the other side. Where are some of Seth's theories similar to certain Buddhist viewpoints? If you cannot grasp the essence of what he is saying, you will feel that he often contradicts himself. Because just earlier he said that in the whole process of manifestation, you should not look at the facts, you should completely ignore the facts, and you should think about the state you want to reach. And then here he says you cannot ignore the facts, you have to look at the facts right in front of you. At this point you have completely failed to understand the level and the point of what he is saying.

The first time he said not to ignore the facts and to focus only on the thing you want to manifest, the focus at that time was on the situation after your beliefs have already changed. Once your beliefs have changed, you focus on the thing you want, on the thing you want to manifest, and you no longer look at the state that has not yet been realized in the present. Because he has already explained to you that, due to our physical world, due to the animal nature of our human bodies, and due to the structure of our nervous system, this process of manifestation requires time. Just as your current illness did not develop in a single day, getting sick is also a process, so does recovering from illness also require time? It cannot be cured in one day either, and that is perfectly normal. If you can understand this, then you will get it.

The point of his previous statement was this: although your beliefs have changed, your illness has not yet healed. At this time, you should not place your attention on the fact that "my illness has not healed yet, so it seems that the idea of beliefs changing reality does not work, is false, and is ineffective." At this point you begin to waver, and you are unable to form a steady stream of consciousness. Your consciousness cannot remain steady; it fluctuates, believing at one moment and not believing the next, believing when things are good and not believing when things are bad. When the body feels comfortable you believe, and when the body has setbacks you stop believing.

What he is saying in this passage is this: when your beliefs have not yet changed, that is a different state. When your beliefs have not yet changed, you need to dig into your beliefs, and at this time you must treat the facts before you as facts, and dig deeply into the roots of the beliefs that formed them. But if at this point you ignore the facts and say, "I will just think of myself as healthy," and you only think about your desired state while your inner beliefs have not changed—in other words, that steady stream of consciousness of yours is still the old stream of consciousness, not yet the new one—then merely ignoring reality like that will do you no good at all, and will be of no help whatsoever. What you need to do is face reality squarely, face your own beliefs squarely, and change your beliefs. Only then can you change that stream of consciousness, turning it into a steady new stream of consciousness to replace the old one, and only then can you manifest.

Here you absolutely must not mix these up. This is the point where many people studying the Seth material, including some spiritual materials and some Buddhist materials, easily get confused. It is right here that they often go around in circles until they get completely lost.

The Meaning Beneath the Words

Below he again repeats: by focusing your mind, when you want something, you can achieve what was said above. And this premise must be remembered: when you focus your mind on "what I want," it must be at a time when a steady stream of consciousness is at work. And the optimal state — his phrasing here is not great either — the optimal state is "I already have something," not "I want something." But at this point he is continuing from the previous paragraph, where you must face reality squarely, and the reality is that you are not yet well, so your current goal is to want health.

When we study things, we need to understand the core meaning, not get hung up on the words. If you get hung up on him saying "what you want," then you would say: wanting something means admitting you do not have it — is that not a wrong belief? You should say "I already have something." If you want to get hung up on these wording issues, then go ahead and get hung up — do you want to gain this ability to change reality, or do you want to argue semantics with Seth? What you should understand is the meaning beneath his words, not some flaws or imprecisions in the wording itself. For most people, "focus your mind on what you want" is understandable, so let us go with that understanding for now — whatever you want, focus your attention on it; whatever you want to manifest, focus your mind on it.

Then in the next sentence, he turns the previous sentence around and speaks to it from the other side. He says that by doing this you can obtain all of the above, but you must remember not to feel any conflict between what you want and what you currently have, because the one is not the contradiction of the other.

This is very interesting. When you think this way, but your reality still needs some time — when it has not yet manifested in reality — do not focus your attention on the fact that it has not yet manifested. If you keep saying "I still have no money, I still have no money, I have thought about being rich, but I still have no money," if you focus your attention on this not-yet-having situation, then it is over. Here he emphasizes again, giving you all kinds of examples and scenarios: do not think this way.

Why? Because you regard the huge gap between what you want and what has not yet been realized in the present as two different, opposing states. Seth tells you that what you want and the circumstances and possibilities you currently have in your life — there is no essential difference between the two. They are simply two different possibilities, and you chose one of them. You chose A before, and now you simply want possibility B. It is not that A and B are worlds apart, nor that they are two sides of the same coin, in opposition. Suppose A represents your current life as a state of financial hardship, and B is a state of financial abundance — that does not mean there is a vast chasm between B and A. The difference between them is the difference of a single turn of thought. They are two possibilities for you to choose from — if you say "I want A," then A is given to you; if you choose B, B is given to you. The difference between them is that great, and that simple.

His meaning is: do not imagine that going from a state of hardship and lack to a state of abundance involves so many obstacles, so many steps to achieve, so many years of struggle to reach the goal you want. If you think that way, then it will truly be realized according to your plan — you really will have to exhaust a lifetime of effort just to reach a relatively abundant state on the verge of death, because that is what you have decided. He tells you not to think this way. The hardship in your previous life was determined by your beliefs. Now that you understand this principle, all you need is a single turn of thought — even overnight, you can change. It is as simple as choosing whether to wear a T-shirt or a button-up shirt tomorrow; either choice is fine.

A Few Key Points About Beliefs

Every situation will be seen as a reaction to a belief in your daily life -- each one is seen as a reaction to a belief in your daily life. If you want to change it, changing the belief is the simple part. But just as it took some time to build up your current unhealthy image, it also takes some time to change it, and turning the unhealthy into the healthy also takes time. But focusing on the current unhealthy state will keep you sick longer.

Every situation is equally real and equally unreal as another. Every possibility is the same to you. You feel that the reality you are in right now is real, and that the unreal one is -- you feel that your current health is real, and the sick you is unreal? Then one day you will feel that the sick you is real, and the not-sick you seems so far away -- "How can I ever become not sick?"

Which you, which world? You must remember this sentence of his. It is like a mantra, or like a key that can unlock your thinking. If this sentence can bring you reflection every time, then you can treat it as a key. When you have nothing to do, ask yourself: which you, which world? What does this sentence mean? It means which you do you want to become, and which world do you want to live in -- that is the meaning behind his words.

Freedom of Choice Within Limitations

When you choose to exist within certain frameworks that are part of your animal nature, you have considerable freedom of choice. That sentence is too convoluted—simply put, when you choose to exist within the kind of framework where you are a physical being, you do have considerable freedom of choice.

Except for your beliefs about them, what you think of as the past and the subconscious have nothing to do with your present experience. Only your beliefs about them have any actual effect. What you think of as the past, and the subconscious, both have nothing to do with your present experience. In other words, it is not a causal relationship—it is not because of past events that you have today's experience, nor is it that some of your earlier life experiences caused today's state. He is telling you it has nothing to do with that. What your life is like today, the experience you are having today, is related only to your beliefs. Your present life has nothing to do with what you call, what you understand as, what happened in your past. Stop complaining about what kind of family you lived in in the past, what wounds you suffered, what your environment was like, what your company was like, what your boss was like—none of that has anything to do with it. What kind of life you want to live depends on just one thing, and that is your beliefs.

Didn't he specifically talk about in Chapter 14 that your past can be changed? So what does it have to do with the past? In Chapter 14 he directly deconstructed and dismantled our submission to the past, and our sense of helplessness and powerlessness over past events. We feel that our present is entirely composed of the past, caused by the past. And since it is caused by the past, and the past cannot be changed, we are the way we are now, and there is nothing we can do—we are passive victims, passive recipients. This is what Chapter 14 already cleared away for you, completely overturning this concept.

So after overturning it, he tells you that your present experience has nothing to do with those things, and nothing to do with your subconscious either. What is the subconscious? The subconscious is the part of ourselves that we consider to be unconscious. It has nothing to do with that either. It is simply your conscious beliefs—it is related to your conscious beliefs. It is just that this process may feel to you as though it happens unconsciously, but if you look carefully, you will find that it is all conscious. It is your conscious belief system that determines your present state of life, and it has nothing to do with the past or with those childhood traumas in the subconscious, terrifying events, or unknown psychological shadows—none of that has anything to do with it. So this passage from Seth completely overturns everyone's understanding of these things, including some of the fundamental concepts of all psychologists.

Your Beliefs Act Like a Magnet, Activating All Past Events

For each of you, the past contains some joyful, powerful, creative, and brilliant moments, as well as unhappy, despairing, or panicked, cruel episodes. Then your present belief acts like a magnet, activating all past issues. It activates all the possibilities of the past, whether happy or sad, and it will select from your previous experience all the events that reinforce your conscious belief, while ignoring those that are irrelevant, which may even seem as if they never existed.

What does this passage mean? All kinds of things you might have experienced in the past have happened, so how exactly can they produce change in you? In other words, Chapter 14 tells you to change the past, and what effect does changing your present beliefs actually have on you now?

What this passage means is that when you change your perception of past events, or when you change past events themselves -- suppose you take pessimistic things and change them all into sunny, grateful, compassionate, thankful, happy, beautiful memories; suppose your life from the time you became conscious was made up entirely of these positive, optimistic, wonderful things; if it was not, then you use the method taught in Chapter 14, go back into your past, and change it into the positive outcome you want -- suppose your life's past experiences were all formed from these positive things. And your present experience, your perception and feeling of what you are experiencing now, much of it is drawn from past experiences, from which you extract those emotions. Those past experiences of yours, for us in the three-dimensional world, for us as physical people, for the animal nature, are your database, equivalent to your emotional database, containing all kinds of emotions and feelings. When you feel sad, it will bring out all those sad things from the past; when you feel happy, you will also bring in those happy things from the past, that kind of emotion.

So the simplest method for you is this: if your past is all happy, all joyful, with no sadness, then when you encounter things in the present moment, the emotions you are able to call upon, or the kind of thing you can activate -- just as I said, the magnet of your present moment attracts that thing -- then what is attracted will all be good. Conversely, if you believe your past experiences were all bad -- being bullied, being oppressed, being subjected to school violence, and some children even being sexually assaulted, and others being abused by parents, being corporally punished by teachers -- if your memory is full of these things, then no matter what you experience in the present moment, you will unconsciously use your belief system to attract those past emotions to you. And if your past emotions are all bad, then what is attracted will all be bad, and you will feel that the present moment is also bad, which will then further affect your feelings about the present, and even affect your expectations for the future. You will enter a chain of negative cycles, a state of negative feedback.

This theory, this system, is just that simple. This is why changing past events is so important. Do you remember when we did the 21-day abundance journey meditation, with many exercises, and in it we did roughly seventeen or eighteen, or around twenty exercises. Weren't many of the exercises in it designed to have you change some negative experiences from the past into positive ones? It used all kinds of methods, including writing a letter to those people you considered threatening to you or whom you considered bad, to thank them and forgive them. Many of the things it did were actually to get you to change.

The significance of changing the past lies right here. If you can understand this principle, then you will understand a great deal, and you will have learned a great deal. This is why those negative things from the past cannot be kept, why those things from the past that you believe must be changed -- because they will affect your present.

Memory Opens the Body's Mechanisms

As mentioned in this book, the memories that surface are those memories that have been manifested for you to discover, and in Chapter Four it was said that this opens the body's mechanisms. It will even activate your cellular memory -- not just the memories in your brain, it will even call up your cellular memory, and your cells will respond accordingly. It brings the past and the present together in some kind of harmonious picture, and all those fragmentary memories will be pieced together, whether they are pleasant or unpleasant.

When your past and present come together in some kind of harmonious picture, those past memories will bring out your body's mechanisms, will open your body's mechanisms. If your past was full of bad things, then it will open up the responses of those bad mechanisms in your body -- that kind of fear, that kind of dread, that kind of frustration, that kind of sorrow, all of them bad. It is not just emotion; it will open up your body's responses. That is why some people get sick, just like that. You see, it pieces together those fragmentary memories, whether they are good or bad. If you have a lot of bad ones, the result that gets pieced together will certainly be bad; if you have no bad ones at all, then what gets pieced together will certainly be good.

This joining of past and present makes it easy for you -- makes it convenient for you to have a similar future world. If your past was all very good, then your present will certainly be very good; if your present is very good, then your future will certainly also be very good. And the reverse is also true -- if your past always felt miserable and wretched, then your present will not feel very comfortable either; if your present does not feel very comfortable, then your future will not feel very comfortable either. So it influences your future, and they are all similar, because you have already prepared yourself to accept that kind of future situation, you have already prepared yourself to accept that kind of bad state.

The present is the only point where the past and the future can be changed

The change in the present -- our change in the present -- quite literally changes both the past and the future. He emphasized this again in this passage, and he also emphasized it in Chapter 14. Because of the nervous system, for you, the present is obviously the only point where the past and the future can be changed or where action can become effective. Because we humans have a concept of time, because we humans make distinctions between present, past, and future, for us humans, what we can feel right now is only this point of the present, and what we can change right now is only our present thoughts, that is, our present beliefs. So this point of the present becomes an extremely important point -- for us humans, we can only feel this point of the present. The past cannot be grasped, and the future cannot be grasped either.

The Buddha said, the past mind cannot be grasped, the future mind cannot be grasped, and the present mind also cannot be grasped⁴. The Buddha said this from the perspective of the simultaneity of the world, from the perspective of simultaneity, from the perspective of no time. But we say, from the human perspective, we can say that the past mind cannot be grasped, the future mind cannot be grasped, but the present mind can be grasped. Your present mind can be grasped, because your present beliefs can be changed, and when you change them, you directly change the past and the future.

In the most immediate terms, your past and future are modified by your present reactions. The change occurs within the body; the circuits within the nervous system are altered. He used a very vivid metaphor -- the pathways of your nerves are all changed, the circuits of your nerves are changed, and then the entire pattern of thinking and the entire pattern of behavior will change as well. And the energy that you do not understand -- on levels far deeper than your consciousness, beneath the level of your consciousness there are levels far deeper -- is seeking new connections. Your energy itself will seek new connections; it will manifest and actualize on the level beneath your consciousness, on the level of the inner self that you cannot perceive, and it will bring about changes in your past and future.

Your present beliefs govern the actualization of events. All events -- present events, past events, and future events -- are changed by your present beliefs. Each person is constantly forming his creativity and experience, right at this present moment of yours.

You must understand that the present is the point where your physical body and physical matter -- meet with the psyche. If we put it in a Buddhist term, using "the present moment" may make it easier to understand. This point of the present is the point where your physical body, your physical matter, and your psyche meet. Your physical body and your external material environment, and your psyche -- the point where they meet, that is the present. If you do not understand what the present is -- it is this point, it is your body, including your external environment, and your psyche -- the point where they meet, that is your present point.

The Present Is Your Point of Power

Therefore, in your present life, the present is your point of power. It is that most powerful point, that point which can most exert power, that point which can most bring forth strength. You have only this one point.

If you feel that the past is more powerful than the present, then you will be filled with a sense of powerlessness. If you believe that the past is more powerful than your present, then you are filled with a sense of powerlessness, because you deny your own energy. What does he mean by this? If you feel that your present is entirely determined by the past, and the past still cannot be changed, then you become powerless. You will say, then my present situation is entirely caused by the past—you deny your own energy. What energy? You can change the past. When you exert power at this present point, you can change the past, so why still complain about the past? Go change it.

Exercise: Feeling the Point of Power in the Present

He asks you to do an exercise. You sit with your eyes wide open, sit there staring wide-eyed, and look around you, look at your surroundings. And realize—realize what? Realize this present moment. At the very moment you are looking, the moment your eyes are looking around you, that is your point of power. You come to feel your point of power, from which you can affect the worlds of the past and the future.

You stare wide-eyed at your present; only by staring wide-eyed can you observe the now. As you look at the things around you, while you are looking at these things, hold one thought in your mind: you can use the point of power in this present moment to change your past and your future.

The present you see with your eyes, together with its immediate physical experience—material experience, that is, physical experience, the experience of the three-dimensional world—the present you see with your eyes, together with this living, material experience that this present moment brings you, the material experience your eyes can see, your ears can hear, your body can feel, is the result of other such present actions. What does that mean? It is the result of actions in another kind of possibility. The material experience you see right now in the present is only the result of one other possibility acting in the now—only one of them, not all of them.

Therefore, do not be intimidated by the past or the future. There is absolutely no need to project into the future that picture in your present reality that you do not like. You have no need to carry into the future the things you do not like now; you can change them directly. Unless you use your present power to carry them into the future.

If you now learn to grasp this feeling of power—he is still doing this exercise—while doing the exercise, you must grasp, learn to grasp this feeling of power. What feeling? The feeling of kicking the things you do not like out of your line of sight. This is your point of power; you must learn that you have this ability. For example, within your current field of vision, among the things you see, if there is something you do not like—to give a concrete example, if there are things you do not like, get up and throw them away. The purpose of throwing them away is to let you feel this powerful feeling in the present, that you can change it. Do not let that thing you do not like appear again in the world of your next second; make it disappear from before your eyes immediately. You do have this ability.

This training, this exercise, is meant to train you to discover, to find this feeling of power, this powerful feeling. You fully have the power to do this. When you train yourself to grasp this powerful feeling, you can, in whatever way you choose, most effectively change the conditions of your life and living. You can even move to another place to live—if you do not like your present environment, change to another city, another country, another environment; you can even change the color of the furniture around you. If you do not even like your current boyfriend or girlfriend, you can change that too—these are all things that can be done in an instant. Why would you let something you clearly do not like keep appearing in your life? Are you making trouble for yourself?

He wants you to experience that sense of power—what sense of power? That in this present moment, your power is boundless. You can decide what you like and what you do not like; you can decide what things you like to bring into the next point in your life; and clear out from this moment the things you do not like. The purpose of this exercise is to let you grasp the power of the point of power in the present, to take that power back, to make you feel that you are not powerless, to sweep away your sense of powerlessness in one stroke. When you feel that you have power, you can change everything.

Physical Limitations and the Possibility of Change

He explains again that this is within the limits set by those animalistic aspects of your being. You can change the circumstances of your life. For example, if you were born with a missing or deformed limb, then your present power cannot automatically regenerate that missing limb in this lifetime; this cannot be done. Although in other reality systems, in other worlds, you might be a whole and healthy person, in this life you are not. This is a fact, and you cannot change this fact.

If you understand the principle being discussed, then outer circumstances can always be changed. Illness can be eliminated, and even those that appear to be incurable can be eliminated. But only when the beliefs behind them are erased -- that is, when these beliefs are replaced -- will the illness be changed, or changed enough so that their specific focal effects on the body are sufficiently released. You either replace the belief, or you change the belief, and only then will your illness get better.

The present as you imagine it, and in practical terms, is that point. From all the events that can be actualized, you choose your physical experience -- the present as you imagine it is this point of power right now. From that point, among all the events that can be actualized, you can choose which ones you want to manifest.

When your beliefs change, your physical environment will automatically change as well. When your knowledge increases, your experience makes life richer. When your beliefs have no limitations, when the limitations become fewer and fewer, when your beliefs become broader and broader, your knowledge will increase, and the things you experience will become more and more numerous. All those potentials you had never experienced before will also emerge. Your identity also has no limitations; you can experience many different identities -- you can become a Michelin-starred chef, you can learn to be a fashion designer, all of it is possible.

This does not necessarily mean that in any respect those experiences have already been balanced out. When your knowledge becomes rich, it does not necessarily mean that in any given aspect those experiences have been balanced out, or that there are no longer any ups and downs. When your energy is open, when you have this ability to change your surrounding environment, it does not mean you will not have any ups and downs, or that your emotions will not have any changes. Nor does it mean that all your abilities are simultaneously present; you will still have all kinds of desires and all kinds of thoughts just as you do now, and you will want to experience all kinds of different lives. It is not that you enter a state of stagnant water, free of desires and demands -- no, it is not that.

Everyone has wishes, because every wish presupposes an acknowledgment of a lack. When you have a wish that has not been fulfilled, that means you certainly have a lack; when you speak this wish aloud, you presuppose the acknowledgment that such a lack exists. Every challenge also presupposes an obstacle to be conquered, a barrier -- when you say I want to challenge, I want to become someone, I want to do something, that certainly presupposes that you have a difficulty you want to challenge.

People who are more adventurous often choose greater challenges. Therefore in their minds, when they compare the achievement they imagine with their current situation, it seems almost impossible. In their minds there is a very far-reaching goal, a very great challenge, and before this challenge is realized, compared with their actual situation at the moment, it seems simply impossible to achieve -- but they achieve it just the same.

Example: Elon Musk

Let me give you the simplest example. Before Tesla's cars succeeded -- and even now you can't exactly say it's fully successful -- its stock price has already surpassed those automakers that have been struggling for over a hundred years, surpassing Ford, GM, and Toyota, and it has now become the largest car company in the world⁵. If you look at its stock price and the size of the company, it has only been around for such a short number of years. And it had no experience building cars -- the idea we were previously indoctrinated with was that building cars requires sedimentation and accumulation, requires decades of accumulated experience, otherwise you could never surpass those traditional automakers. Yet a person who had never built a car, a person who came from the IT industry, who got his start with PayPal, in the end went and built cars, and in one stroke became the largest car company in the world. This was something everyone thought impossible to imagine at the very beginning. In the middle there were several times when he was almost done for, almost dead, and many times he had to sell off his own properties to cover the company's losses.

Yet in every situation, the point of power is in the present. Those things that seem impossible to accomplish are all realized through each point of power occurring in the present. And from that moment, which you and which world you choose -- whether you choose to become Elon Musk, or to become an ordinary wage earner, that is decided by you. Right from that present moment of the point of power, you choose which you you want to become, what kind of empire, what kind of kingdom, what kind of world of your own you want to build -- all of that is up to you.

A nation's experience is the accumulated result of the choices made by each individual within it. So when you choose your own circumstances, you will influence every person within your country and your world. This is very simple -- Elon Musk actually only wanted to realize one personal goal of his own, yet he inadvertently changed the entire automobile industry. Before Elon Musk, the entire world's automobile industry took Japan as its leader; America had already fallen to second place. Whether it was GM or Ford, none of them were doing well; it was those major Japanese car companies. Yet one Tesla, merely the realization of Elon Musk's personal ideal, overturned the entire automobile industry and even changed the map of the world's automobiles.

Of course, he is still doing rocket flights now, the SpaceX rocket launches, and he has changed that field as well. A private company of his, the thrust of his Falcon 9 rocket, has already surpassed that of many countries today⁶. Including China's launch vehicle thrust, it may have surpassed many, many -- yet he is a single individual, while our country uses the strength of the entire nation.

Beliefs About Age

In many indigenous cultures, a person is not considered in terms of his age at all. In some indigenous local cultures, how old one is does not matter. In fact, a person may not even know how old he himself is. You go to a very remote tribe, and you ask the oldest person in that tribe: "Oh, how old are you, sir?" He says he does not know either; he cannot remember. He has forgotten his age, and he does not want to remember his age. Why? Because youth, middle age, and old age are all the same. Forget it -- because you can change the past, change the present, change the future.

Youth has the good of youth, old age has the good of old age, middle age has the good of middle age -- all are good. Because in your culture, in that respect, there are many beliefs that impose limitations on people. In the matter of age, our culture has limitations -- we feel that youth negates wisdom, saying that young people do not understand things and lack experience; old age negates joy, saying that old people are no longer capable, no longer have drive, no longer have momentum, and are stuck in their ways.

But pretending to ignore your age, or acting young because you are afraid of your age, is not the answer. Be sure to remember -- it is not about pretending to be young, ignoring your age, or because you are afraid of your age, acting young, acting cute. None of these are the way; none of these are the answer. Do not go the wrong way; do not go in the opposite direction. Learn from the old people in those tribes who say "I do not know how old I am either" -- they really do not know; they are not pretending. Do you really not know? Are you not just acting cute?

In your terms, your reality and your point of power are within your present experience. It has nothing to do with your age. The realization of this will allow you, at any age, to draw upon the material and knowledge, the qualities and abilities that existed in the past or will exist in the future. What does it have to do with age? If you realize this ability, then age no longer imposes any limitation.

Although time basically does not exist as you know it, your nervous system nevertheless forces you to view life as a series of moments, a series of moments from birth to death, a series of present moments. As a member of the animal kingdom, you are born, and as long as we have physical existence, have bodily existence, you will gradually grow from young to old. That is a fact.

Animals' experience in that regard is not nearly so limited. When animals grow old, they have no limitations; they have no beliefs about old age, and they do not automatically shut down their abilities. Although they, like all living beings, will die, they do not decline in the way humans do. Humans cause themselves to decline, cause themselves to close down, precisely because we are limited by erroneous beliefs about old age.

You do not understand the communication between yourself and your pets. They respond to your beliefs in their own way; they respond to your thoughts. So do not think that the pets you raise are not influenced by your beliefs; they are equally influenced by your beliefs, just in their own way. They respond to your beliefs, and therefore become fragile. Have you noticed? No matter what kind of dog you raise, even a big wolfhound, the more you raise it, the more it becomes like a little darling, like a little plaything. Its wildness becomes less and less; it becomes very fragile, and there are even very complex specialized pet hospitals prepared for them. In nature there are no pet hospitals, and animals can live perfectly well on their own. Before modern human civilization there were no hospitals either, and humans also lived perfectly well. But now they have become very fragile.

In broader terms, their relationship with you is natural. But their innate realization of the animal's point of power in the present is, to some degree, undermined by their own receptivity and their receptivity to your beliefs. What does this mean? Animals are very aware that the point of power is in the present -- they only concern themselves with the present -- but after a certain point, their receptivity, and their receptivity to your beliefs, undermines this realization.

He gives an example and you will understand right away. A kitten and an older cat are treated differently. The cat will respond to this conditioning. In the same way, your conclusions about age become fact in experience. It is the same for cats -- we will play with a kitten, find the kitten cute and fun, play with it in all sorts of ways, with a cat teaser, all kinds of play. But with an old cat, you will not play with it; you feel the old cat should just lie there every day enjoying its remaining years. You feel the old cat is old, and even the food is different -- kittens have kitten food, adult cats have adult cat food, old cats may have old cat food. The old cat should be taken care of; the old cat's health should be poor. These beliefs are actually all human beliefs, but you instill them into it. In the animal kingdom there is no such thing; an animal knows the day it will die, and until then it remains the same as at any other time.

In this regard, if you can convince yourself that you are ten years younger or ten years older, then this will also be faithfully reflected in your personal environment. This statement is very crucial. If you want to be young, if you really convince yourself that you are ten years younger, then in real life, reflected in your environment, it will make people see you as ten years younger. It is that simple. If you feel you are ten years older, if you identify with that, then when others see you, they will get the feeling that you look ten years older than your actual age. This is why in real life, many people look very young, while some people look very old. Both are forty years old, yet some forty-year-old men look very vigorous, while others already show signs of age. If you extend this age further to fifty or sixty, it is the same. It is the same for women -- some women in their forties or fifties still look like young girls, while some, just past thirty and after having two children, have already begun to trend toward becoming an older matron. That is entirely determined by her beliefs.

If you are twenty years old, you can draw upon the wisdom you imagine yourself having at thirty; if you are sixty years old, you can also make use of it -- you can make use of the physical strength that you imagine you no longer have now but had before. These will likewise be substantively and biologically expressed within your body. If you firmly believe, if you refuse to accept old age, you will have this ability; if you believe you do not have it, then you really will not have it. If you believe this, it will be so.

Which you, which world? Which you do you want to be, and what kind of world do you want to become?

The Belief in Loneliness

If you are lonely, it is because you accept this present point of time, and you believe that you are lonely. You feel lonely precisely because at this present point you believe you are lonely. From the seeming past, you draw only those memories that reinforce your own loneliness, and you project them into the future. When the body reacts to a lonely situation, you flood your body with chemical and hormonal reactions -- when you feel lonely, certain hormonal chemical reactions are produced, and these chemical reactions directly flood your body -- and then you also deny the point of your own action within the present moment. You feel that you do not want to act anymore, very listless and dispirited, because you feel solitary and lonely.

Vitamins or good food or medical care can temporarily restore your strength, can make you temporarily better, but unless you change your own beliefs, the body will soon be flooded again by despondency. In such a case, you must understand that you yourself have created your own loneliness, and make up your mind to change it through thought and action. Be sure to remember that it is through thought and action -- this is what everyone needs to understand -- you cannot just think, you must also follow with action. Action is thought that is physically moved and can be seen. You must turn it into action through your aggressiveness, and you cannot say that you only think -- merely thinking is useless.

After-Class Interlude

After Seth finished dictating, Rob was already relaxed and full of energy. Both of them had been influenced by Seth and already felt full of vitality, and he wanted to go out for a beer. But by this time it was already 11:37, and the session would end at 11:45, so it was almost midnight. You know, in America, at midnight, if it is not a major metropolis, not a big city like New York or Chicago, if you go out at midnight there is nothing open at all. So he thought about having a beer, and they had a youthful state come back to them, but after thinking it over they felt it was too late, so they did not go.

At this point Seth began to make an interesting remark again. Seth said, I told you to go to the bar you usually go to — he was talking about something from the previous week, when Seth suggested that Rob and Jane go to the bar they often visited to have a drink, relax, and chat, and not just write Seth sessions whenever they had free time, not just write poetry or paint whenever they had free time. Go hang out at the bar for a while and live a youthful life. But no one listened to me; the two workaholics would not listen to anyone. They probably felt that going to a bar was a waste of time and a waste of effort. So Seth emphasized this once more through this remark, which was especially amusing.

Then he said, Jane really liked the phrase "the point of power" and found it very thought-provoking. After the session she repeated it several times, and she hoped Seth would use it as the title of this chapter; she wanted to make the title of this chapter "The Point of Power." But she only discussed it and did not actually do it, because she respected the title Seth had given to this chapter.

The Point of Power Is in the Present

At the beginning of this session, Jane noticed a strange phenomenon. She realized that she was often receiving material from Seth that we had not yet reached in our progress, that is, content that was not yet supposed to be covered. She said she felt confused when she woke up. What was that about? Sometimes it was just information meant for her, but in any case, she knew that dictation had taken place, carried out while she was sleeping, and that I had even been taking notes. But then she realized that was impossible, because we were still in bed.

She said she had had similar experiences before, described in the note after Session 619 in Chapter 4.

Seth's dictated material at the start of this session began directly with this:

I want you to set the following sentence apart on its own line, make it stand out in larger type, and draw a line beneath it: "The point of power is in the present."

Session 657

On this question, he already emphasized the importance of the point of power in the previous session, and here he emphasizes it again. He says this sentence is one of the most important statements in this book, namely "the present is the point of power." Moreover, this statement is valid within the framework of time as you understand it, that is to say, it is very effective within our space-time, within this present space-time, as previously mentioned in Session 653 of Chapter 14:

At this point of contact between spirit and flesh, you choose one event from among probabilities according to your beliefs, and you actualize it.

This is why the point of power is effective. At the place where your spirit and flesh meet, that is your present point. At this present point, according to your beliefs, you choose one event from among probabilities and actualize it, manifest it. This is the most important function of the point of power.

All of the mental and psychic abilities of your body are focused in the brilliant focus of the present experience, and are not under the command of past or previous beliefs unless you believe that they are.

All of your physical, mental, and psychic abilities are focused in the brilliant focus of the present experience, and are not under the control of past or previous beliefs. Unless you believe they are under their control, then they are not under that control.

If you fully understand that your power is in the present, then you will realize that action at that point also changes the past, and changes past beliefs and your reactions, including the reactions of your body.

In other words, I am telling you that current beliefs are like a command given to the whole personality, a directive.

He is now telling you that your current beliefs are like a directive given to the whole personality. According to your current ideas about reality, you also organize and reorganize past experience.

Our ideas about reality are limited by time, and have the framework of space-time. According to our framework of time having past, present, and future, you are giving this current belief, and at the same time organizing and reorganizing past experience. From the perspective of our time, it is equivalent to you changing the past. Of course, those probable futures will also be changed by you in the same way.

Looking backward for the causes of present problems only causes you to develop the habit of searching the past for negative episodes, and prevents you from using the past as a source of pleasure, achievement, and success.

What he means is, do not keep looking back for the causes of your present problems. Do not look for the kind of causes of "why has the present situation turned out this way." Looking for these causes will only cause you to develop the habit of searching for negative episodes. Whenever anything in your present life or experience is not smooth or not satisfactory, you immediately look back to see whether certain things in the past caused today's result. This habit creates a fixed pattern of thinking: present things are all caused by past things.

"Then I have no choice, because the past has already happened, what can I do?" This is your fixed pattern of thinking, and this itself is a completely wrong idea. It can prevent you from using the past as a source of pleasure, achievement, or success.

I already introduced this in the previous session: all of your present feelings must have a source, a raw material. If you want this storehouse of materials to be composed of pain, sadness, loss, pessimism, and despair, then you take materials from there, and use those materials to weave and knit your present experience. If from the time you have memory, all of your past experience is pleasant, full of success, full of achievement, inwardly peaceful, and full of joy, then I would ask you: if all of your memories were these, would it be possible for you to have unpleasant feelings in the present? Your unpleasant feelings could not even arise, because there would be no material for them at all.

This is a core point. But today you feel this is not going well and that is not going well, this is not satisfactory and that is not satisfactory, precisely because you are constantly going into the past to find those negative materials, to reinforce yourself by saying: oh, I am not doing well today because I did something last year; or I am not doing well now because I made some decision yesterday. So this habit of constantly digging up negative emotions and negative materials from the past will determine that your present is forever in this kind of negative emotion and pessimistic state.

If you adjust your past into a state of pleasure, achievement, joy, and satisfaction, then under the cultivation of such materials, no matter what seed of belief you plant in the present, what it bears will always be a flower of happiness. Because your present grows out of the soil of the past. If all your past seeds were in the soil of joy, then no matter what seed you plant now, it will grow into a flower of happiness. The reverse is also true: if you feel that your past was all negative, then no matter what seed you plant, what grows will be negative, unpleasant flowers.

You structure your earlier life through your present dissatisfaction, and hence reinforce your problems.

This sentence is very interesting: through your dissatisfaction with your present life, you go and construct your earlier life, and you also construct it as unsatisfactory. Because your present life is unsatisfactory, you blame your previous life for causing the present result, so are you not also constructing your previous life as unsatisfactory? If your previous life was all unsatisfactory, how could it produce a satisfactory present? It can only reinforce your problems, only make your pessimism more serious, and make the difficulties you face stronger. It will not give you any help.

It is as if you were reading a history book that told only of humanity's failures, cruelties, and errors, and ignored all of humanity's achievements. If you read such a book, this approach could cause you to use your own history in the wrong way.

You are using your own history in the wrong way, because it gives you a very distorted picture of who you are and what you are, and this picture paints your present condition. You use the beliefs of "who you are" and "what you are" to paint your present picture, and the source of these beliefs is taken from a distorted picture that is entirely pessimistic, cruel, and erroneous. The same principle applied to the individual is also the same.

Those who are in the habit of this practice often examine the past to discover what is wrong with the present, and often miss the point of the problem, and instead often reinforce the negative experiences they wish to escape.

They miss the point and reinforce these negative experiences, and this is their result. Their original problem was caused by this same kind of thinking. What problem? It is that the problem they first encountered in the present was caused by this kind of thinking.

Many unsatisfactory situations are caused by the individual beginning to feel afraid at different stages of life, doubting himself, and beginning to concentrate upon negative viewpoints.

What was it at the beginning? It was all the individual beginning to feel afraid at different stages of life, beginning to doubt himself, and then beginning to concentrate on negative viewpoints. He no longer believes in himself, begins to doubt himself, and feels fear about the future. And at this time, he is making excuses for himself, absolving himself: the cause of my present situation is not a present problem, it is not my fault, it is all the fault of the past, it is all to be blamed on the past. So he will go back into the past again, gather up those trivial bits of so-called negative emotions from old, stale matters, organize them into a very powerful story and plot that seems well-evidenced, and then deduce that our present situation was caused by those past events.

In some ways his situation may be quite different, and large areas of life may not have been touched by a certain attitude, while others have indeed been affected by your attitude.

That is to say, many things in your life have actually not been affected by certain of your attitudes, but other things have indeed been affected.

A person may be extremely healthy, with no problems at all, and yet because of certain experiences, begin to doubt his ability to get along with others. Therefore he begins to look into his past, with the belief in his mind that he cannot get along with people.

He begins to believe that he does not get along well with others, and with this belief in his mind, he then finds some kind of reason in his previous behavior to support this idea. He will find some traces in those past behaviors to support his claim: I have problems communicating with others. On the contrary, if he carefully searched through all of his memories, and tried to find another kind of proof, namely that I get along very well with others and my ability to deal with people is very strong, then in the same past, with the same events that happened, he would find many examples of getting along well with people, and he could find many positive examples.

Your current beliefs will reorganize your memories, and what you remember will seem to make those beliefs reasonable.

This is a method I have talked about before: this conscious mind of the human being, that is, the ego consciousness, the consciousness of the sense of self, is like a storyteller. Why do we like to listen to stories when we are young? When we were little we would say, "Mom, tell me a story," and we would listen to stories before bed. We have loved listening to stories since childhood. The process of listening to stories is training our conscious mind. Training it to do what? Training it to find a reasonable explanation for many things, training it to rationalize the things you encounter around you and the things you experience, to rationalize them like a story with a beginning and an end.

From the time you were a few months old, one year old, two years old, all the way until you went to school, the ability you have been constantly strengthening is the ability to tell stories. Every person's storytelling ability is more or less very strong, and this ability is unconscious. You yourself are not aware of it, and you automatically tell stories. This way of telling stories will automatically come and rationalize your beliefs, rationalize your present thoughts.

For example, when you fall in love with someone, you will automatically list and weave together a bunch of reasons: why do I love him? Because he was good to me that time. Many girls say: because that time when we were crossing the street, he saw my shoelace was untied, and he crouched down to tie it for me, and I fell in love with him just like that. Did you fall in love with someone just because he tied your shoelace? Is that the entire original motivation for your love? But this story, when you tell it to your close friends many times, or tell it to the people around you many times, or when you hint at this picture to yourself many times, you really come to believe it. You really come to believe that you fell in love with him because one day when crossing the street he crouched down and tied your shoelace, and this was an action that no other man had ever done for you.

I give this example to tell you: is this not you making up a story for yourself? Think carefully. When we look at every person's experience of love, whether man or woman, the process and the plot that comes out of their mouth is completely different from what their friends, close friends, or buddies see. They themselves are immersed in their own story. A close friend will often say: oh, a man like that, if she is the kind of close friend who tells you everything, she will say: why do you like such a jerk? And you will not think so. You will think this man is very good, the best among thousands of men. Many people will also say: why do you like a girl like that? She is so materialistic, so realistic. And then you will say: she is not materialistic, she is not realistic, she is so good to me, she did such and such for me that day.

So, the simplest principle: you must understand one characteristic of your own consciousness. It operates in this way. You rationalize your memories according to your present beliefs. This is your most normal behavior. You do not need to teach it. Your brain automatically does this. It reorganizes your memories, but its method of organization always conforms to your present beliefs, always conforms to the belief of "who you are, what you are, what you want to do," and it makes up stories around this theme. Why do we say it makes up stories? Because it is very extreme. It will only see the things and facts that conform to your present beliefs, while other facts are invisible to it, unheard by it, simply not seen at all.

When you look at your past with a new belief in your heart, for example, if you are ill, remember the times when you were not ill, and search your life for proof of your health. When you are sick, think about what you looked like when you were not sick, and then find proof that your body is still healthy. Your life itself is the best proof that health is within you. In other words, the fact that you are alive proves that you are healthy. This is a proof, because if it were not so, you would have died long ago.

In almost all cases concerning your present deficiency, there is an important problem in this particular area: the person, for whatever reason, has taught himself to emphasize negative viewpoints.

In the cases where you currently have some deficiency, everyone says I cannot do this, someone says I lack this ability, someone says I lack that ability. When this kind of thing happens, what is it all caused by? It is all because there is an important problem: the person, for whatever reason, has taught himself to emphasize this negative viewpoint. Today's result is precisely because he has been constantly emphasizing and teaching himself this negative viewpoint: I am simply no good in this area.

I have often said that beliefs cause reality. No symptom will disappear simply like that unless the reason is ascertained, but such reasons are far deeper than your current beliefs about cause and effect.

The meaning of this statement is a bit convoluted: the symptom will not disappear unless the reason is ascertained, that is to say, only when this reason changes and this reason disappears will the symptom disappear. But this reason is far deeper than your ideas about cause and effect. What reason? It is the process of "beliefs cause reality." Why does this idea exist? Because we always look for a reason, namely that today's problem must have been caused by some cause in the past. This is a very typical causal relationship, but it says that in many cases, it is hidden far deeper than the theory of causality. Because in real life it appears in the form of storytelling: the big bad wolf, Little Red Riding Hood, the Three Little Pigs. From the influence of stories since childhood, when you grow up, the cases of certain people's success, the things around you, happy families and unhappy marriages, all of these stories will instill in you a narrative way of thinking. And this narrative way of thinking is hidden even deeper than the idea of karmic retribution. Because it is hidden deep, it is deeply rooted. Without your realizing it, you are influenced by this fixed pattern of thinking that "the present situation is caused by certain causes in the past," and it is very hard to change, and you cannot even discover it.

They involve each person's intimate philosophical value judgments. Beneath the obvious causes of personal deficiencies in life, there are other far-reaching beliefs.

In every person's life, there are some obvious deficiencies and obvious causes. Let me give an example. What is an obvious cause? For example, someone gets tuberculosis because he worked in a mine for a long time, and the dust from mining caused it. The cause of this tuberculosis is actually very obvious: it was caused by the working environment. It seems that the cause has been found. But Seth says: why did he work under such conditions? Beneath this cause, there are other far-reaching beliefs. Remember this: there are other far-reaching beliefs.

Each person will use those elements of his personal experience to support it. This applies to any serious deficiency or obstacle that is enough to become a problem.

What "applies" means is that all of these are caused by this reason. Beneath the obvious surface cause, there is an even deeper cause at the level of belief.

You have been taught to feel that you are at the mercy of your previous practice. Therefore your idea of searching for the causes of personal difficulties is to examine the past.

When you say that personal difficulties appear because my present circumstances are not good, then your first thought is to examine where you did not do well in the past, what decisions you made wrong, to look for what you did wrong there, what errors occurred there, or what improper interpretations you made there.

Again, regardless of what you have been taught, the point of power is in the present. Your current beliefs will be used to organize your memories.

He emphasizes this point again: no matter what you say, no matter what others teach you, your point of power is in the present, and your beliefs organize your past memories. In other words, your memories are all inaccurate, all adapted by your beliefs.

Those memories can be used to reach any conclusion.

Those memories themselves are raw material, and they can reach any conclusion. If you want them to be positive, they are positive. If you want them to be negative, they are negative. However you want to explain them, you can explain them that way. Memories themselves are like a pile of materials sitting there. How you interpret them depends entirely on your present beliefs. Just as statistics can be used, when we interpret big data from statistics, there is always a rationale for however you interpret it. The data just sits there, and it depends on how you explain it.

When you are examining past memories, you may select one or two remembered events and use them as the reasons for your present behavior. If so, then you are already prepared to change your present beliefs and behavior patterns, and are merely using those events as a stimulus or motivation for changing your habits.

If this is the case, and you say that the reason I am like this now is because of certain things in the past, then you can pick out these things now and use them as a stimulus and motivation for changing your present behavior patterns. The reason I want to change is that certain causes back then created today's result. And then at this point you begin to exaggerate and say: these problems of mine have led to my problems today, and I want to change. Where do I see the problem? The problem is in the past, caused by certain things in the past. Then you will project them into the future by exaggerating the question of "where is my problem."

You exaggerate this problem, and then this problem is projected by you into the future, which will only lead you to create more limitations and reinforce the original inner state. There will only be more limitations for your future. Because you will feel that your present behavior is caused by certain events in the past, and the things you do in the future will also be affected by these things, affected by those things you did wrong before.

At this point Seth begins to refute you, and he begins to question:

Which you? Which world? These questions should be answered in the present as you understand it, through the realization that the power of your action is in the present and not in the past.

He gives an example. For instance, I ask you: which you? What kind of you do you want to become? What kind of world do you want? This is the question of "which world, which you." If you want to answer this question, you should understand one thing: the present you, right now, is the source of all power of action. What kind of you do you want to become now, what kind of world do you want now? If you answer in this way, then:

The only effective point for changing any aspect of your world is through the miraculous connection between the psyche and the self achieved through nerve impulses.

This sentence is very interesting. The change of belief at this present point will pass through nerve impulses. Belief is the thinking activity in your brain. When your thinking activity changes and your belief changes, the nerves begin to fire. Through this nerve impulse of belief, it will achieve the miraculous instantaneous connection between the psyche and the self, and you can unleash the point of power in your present.

Dear friends, to remove these annoying limitations, you must reorganize your past from the present. Regardless of your present circumstances, you must treat the past as a rich source.

Regardless of your actual present situation, you must treat the past as your source. Look at it, find your successes, and then reorganize it.

When you explore the past to search for errors, you become blind to the places where you did right.

You can no longer see the places where you did right. So-called blindness is looking without seeing.

If you do this, the past will only reflect your present difficulties.

If your source is all errors, all the places where you did wrong, then it will only reflect the difficulties you face and reinforce your present difficulties. For you, other events truly become invisible.

Since basically the past and the future exist simultaneously, then you are also in danger of constructing your future along the same lines.

And it is not "if." Basically this is the fact. The past and the future exist simultaneously. If you look into your past in such a pessimistic way, seeing only errors and one foolish thing after another that you once did, then you will also construct your future in the same way, because that is determined by your beliefs. Your beliefs make you see only the errors of the past, and these beliefs will inevitably create a particularly pessimistic and particularly terrible future for you.

A person can run from one psychologist to another, from one form of self-therapy to another, and then he will ask the same eternal question: what is wrong?

What exactly is wrong with me? Why does this kind of thing happen to me? This question itself becomes a template.

No matter which psychologist or which psychiatrist you go to, you will ask: what exactly is wrong with me? Find it for me, doctor, take a look at me, what is wrong with me. Then you first narrate your own miserable experience, and at this point you may even cry and wipe your tears, and that sad emotion comes over you once again, making yourself terribly sad, with tears streaming down your face, and then you look at the doctor with pleading eyes: tell me what exactly is wrong? What cause in the past created this? And then you narrate your miserable childhood experience all over again.

Have you not become Xianglin's Wife? Think carefully about this kind of behavior. If you have read Lu Xun's short story "Xianglin's Wife"⁷, you will know: is this not that typical symptom? You repeat over and over again the painful and erroneous experiences of your childhood, your youth, your past, and at the same time you narrate to the doctor your present painful psychology and the difficulties you cannot escape now, and then you ask the doctor: what exactly is wrong with me? What kind of hint do you want to give the doctor? Have you not already made up the story yourself, saying that the reason for my present situation is caused by the past? The doctor will then go along with what you say: look, the reason for your present situation is because of how things were in your childhood, how your childhood experiences were. You say: yes, yes, yes, yes, the doctor is right, that makes so much sense.

You merely want to find a doctor to confirm and reinforce this belief of yours. And such a doctor is actually also irresponsible. He does not care. Anyway, you pay him by the hour for psychological counseling, and as long as you feel satisfied, that is fine. You will say: hmm, this doctor is very good, everything he says is what I want to hear and what I like to hear. But does this help you?

The question itself becomes a template. You will look at experience through it, and it itself represents one of the main reasons for all physical and psychic limitations.

When you repeatedly ask what exactly is wrong with me, this sentence itself means you have already lost the fact that "your present point of power can change things," and that is why you ask this question. You are asking what went wrong in the past. This "question itself" becomes a template, a pattern of thinking, a fixed way of thinking. You will look at problems and experience through this template and this fixed way of thinking. And it itself represents one of the main reasons for all physical and psychic limitations.

That is, you push the problem outward, look for answers outside, look for answers in past events. You do not believe that you can change this problem in the present. You place yourself in a state of powerlessness, and you hope that an outsider will tell you what is wrong with yourself. This "problem" itself is a limitation.

Sooner or later a person will stop focusing on what is right in certain personal areas, and begin to turn toward specific deficiencies, focusing on them and magnifying them. Then with all good intentions he looks for various solutions, but all of them are based on the premise that something is wrong.

This passage actually describes the psychology of many people very clearly. A person was not like this before. A child is very confident at the beginning. He rarely thinks about what is wrong. He mainly focuses on what is right. Children never think about what is wrong. It is only adults who tell them: this is wrong, that is not right, you are wrong in this way, you are wrong in that way. They punish the child every day, and still hope that the child will reflect on what he did wrong.

Fine, you educate the child every day and punish the child every day, and one day the child finally begins to stop focusing on what is right about himself. The child finally becomes what you wanted him to become, begins to think about what exactly he did wrong, begins to write self-criticisms, self-examinations, digging deep for the root causes. We just push our children every day to write self-criticisms, all right? You push him, push him to this extent, and he begins to stop thinking about what is right about himself. He begins to focus on those deficiencies, and begins to focus on and magnify the deficiencies. At first they are very small deficiencies, and then gradually they are magnified step by step.

For example, a child is playful and does not do his homework, and you push him, so in the end he starts to lie: my homework notebook got lost, I forgot the homework the teacher assigned today. Actually it was just playfulness, but in the end you pushed him into starting to lie. Then the lying gets caught by you, and there is another round of scolding and beating. At this point the child will think of himself as a child who lies. Maybe a child sneaks a piece of candy because he is greedy for a treat, which is a very normal child's behavior, but under your coercion and inducement as an adult, he has no choice but to admit that he is a lying, dishonest child.

What are you doing? You are teaching the child to focus his attention on, intensify, and magnify his own shortcomings. Why did you not think that before this child sneaked the candy, he had already restrained himself many times? He just did not succeed in restraining himself the last time. It is not that he never restrained himself; he did restrain himself, but in the end he still could not resist eating it. You did not see the places where he succeeded in restraining himself earlier. Why do you not say: hmm, you are doing very well, you already restrained yourself many times, and the last time you did not succeed; next time try to restrain yourself a few more times and see whether there is a better result? Why do you instead say the opposite: how come you went and stole food again, and why did you steal it and still lie to me?

The point of my giving this example is that in a person's normal process of development, from the very beginning he will not focus on his own shortcomings. A person born between heaven and earth will not see his own shortcomings. His own foundation and essence come from the level of the soul, and he is inherently complete and lacking nothing; he has no shortcomings. But because of our value concepts and our educational methods, we make him magnify those trivial shortcomings again and again, until in the end it seems as if everyone has some shortcomings. If a person has no shortcomings, he would even be embarrassed to tell others -- if you say you have no shortcomings, you will certainly be seen as arrogant and conceited, or else there must be something wrong with your nerves.

Why must everyone place themselves under the persona of "I am a person with many shortcomings"? Some religions even say you have something as terrible as original sin. Why must we stick these wrong labels on this person, and still expect him to develop well? How could that be possible? So this is a typical place that we must try to avoid and pay attention to in our ordinary education of children.

Then you magnify the shortcomings, and they become shortcomings, and then you educate the child by saying: you must go find all kinds of answers with all good intentions. You say, why did you go steal food? It is because my willpower is not firm enough, and I must train my willpower -- go find all kinds of ways to solve the problem. You begin to instill in him the so-called correct chicken soup for the soul and values of life. Are these useful? He says these are all built on the premise that "some things are wrong." If you want to find a solution, is the premise not that you think he is wrong, and only then do you go looking for an answer? If from the very beginning you do not think this is a wrong thing, and you see that everything in the past was positive, then what answer do you still need?

So the problem lies right here. We all grew up in this kind of environment and under this kind of social education.

If you continue to do this, the attention to the negative will gradually seep into other areas of experience that were previously uncontaminated.

If you continue to live according to this kind of thought pattern, then those areas that were previously uncontaminated, the places where you did not feel you had done anything wrong, will also gradually be infiltrated bit by bit, until in the end it seems as if you have done many things wrong in your life. From one small place, one area, it will extend into another area.

For example, at first it is only one aspect that is not done well, perhaps not being good at communicating with people, or having a rather eccentric temperament. This in itself is not a problem, nor is it a mistake. But other people will think it is a mistake and tell you: this will not do for you, you are too withdrawn. Then that will lead you to think that making friends with others is a problem for you, and your interpersonal relationships are bad; interpersonal relationships will then lead you to think that your abilities in society are not good enough; social abilities will then lead you to think that your ability to earn money is also insufficient; if your ability to earn money is insufficient, you will feel that your contribution to the family is also not good enough, and that in the future you will not have the economic conditions to build a happy family -- it will seep in bit by bit, step by step, into every field and every aspect. Because you have one source of having done something wrong, you can attribute all problems to that source. Then it is as if you have found someone to take the blame, and you pile all the blame onto him, but in fact the problem has not been solved at all, and instead the area of your self-denial grows larger and larger.

You are not in the grip of past beliefs. On the other hand, the sooner you begin to act upon the new beliefs the better, otherwise you do not trust them in the present.

You must take action on the new beliefs -- below he talks about how to act. If you do not take actual action on your new beliefs, then you do not trust these beliefs.

If you are poor and want to have more money, and try to maintain a belief in abundance while still facing the present fact of poverty, you must make some symbolic gestures in your life and show that you are willing to accept such a change.

Apart from changing your beliefs, you must also change in your actions -- this is the secret. After we studied the theory in Chapter 14, Chapter 15 and the following Chapters 16 and 17, in these later chapters of the book, he is teaching you methods. To put it plainly, the theory is actually very simple once it is thoroughly explained, but when it comes to actually doing it, it is indeed very difficult, not so easy. I said at the very beginning of this book that this is a bloody process of self-dissection. Starting from Chapter 14, Seth enters the core of this problem, dissecting and analyzing it step by step; starting from Chapter 15, he gradually gives you some methods, but the methods are spoken of in a rather scattered and fragmentary way, so you must listen carefully and extract them from it. If you are willing to take notes, then write them down; there is a great deal of content, otherwise you may not grasp the key points.

The example given here is very vivid. You must maintain a belief in abundance while still facing the present fact of poverty, so you must make some symbolic gestures in your life and show that you are willing to accept such a change.

This sounds very stupid, but you should give away a little money.

Although you are now very poor and you want to become very rich, you must take some action in your behavior. What action? For example, you should give away a little money, you should begin giving money to others. Or in whatever suitable way, act as if you really have more money than you actually possess. You must respond to the new belief -- that is, I am very rich, I am very abundant, my life right now is very abundant. You must respond to this belief, change in your actions, and give it positive information; the nerves of the body will receive this new information.

Let me give a simple example. When you want to change my financial situation and want to become very rich and abundant, first, do not think "I want to be very rich" -- that is wrong. You must think "I am very rich, and right now I am living a very abundant life." Then later he will say, spend five minutes every day, and focus these five minutes on this issue: turn having money into "I am already very rich," and focus on this state. Then according to how a rich person would think, how he would live, and how he would act -- if you were already very rich, how would you do things? It is that simple. Just spend five minutes thinking about this matter.

Then make some symbolic actions. For example, from today on tell yourself: whenever I see any beggar, I will give them money, no matter how much. If you were born abroad, for example in America or Europe, then you would say: then from now on when I go out to eat, I must give enough of a tip -- for example, 15% is a reasonable amount, so I will give a 15% tip every time, because I am very rich. Let me give another joking example: before, you only ate instant noodles every day; suppose life was very difficult and you could only eat instant noodles, then this time can you add an egg to the instant noodles, add a tea egg, is that okay?

From Belief to Action: Changing Reality in Five Minutes

After you put the new belief "I am wealthy" into your brain, Seth emphasizes that you must also follow through with actual action. You cannot stay only at the level of thought, otherwise your body and your old action patterns will still follow the old habits, and those old habits will in turn reinforce your old beliefs.

So you need to make some small but symbolically meaningful changes, in order to bring about a fundamental shift in your life.

For example, in the past when you wanted coffee, the moment you thought about spending money at Starbucks you gave up. So starting today, when you feel like having coffee, can you just go and have a cup? It is that simple. Another example: in the past, when buying clothes you were limited by financial conditions and only bought things under a few hundred yuan; now you try spending one hundred yuan more each time. You originally planned to spend three hundred yuan on a skirt, so tell yourself, this time I will spend four hundred. Each time let yourself break through a little.

You might worry: "Then won't my life be living beyond my means? My current life is the result of long-term tempering. If I spend recklessly, what will happen in the future?" It won't. You have to believe that every extra penny you spend will come back into your life in a different way. It will definitely come back.

What is this doing? It is using actual behavior to reinforce your belief system. This belief cannot just stay in your brain; you must use action to reinforce it, letting your nervous system gradually adapt to the state of "I am wealthy." Otherwise, as mentioned in the previous session, if you maintain "I am wealthy" in your thoughts but still act according to the old inertia, your body will reinforce the old belief, not the new one.

He says:

You habitually express yourself with a certain attitude as a result of your beliefs.

The results of beliefs are those actions. Now when you deliberately change certain life habits, it is equivalent to conveying this information to your nervous system. When you add an egg to your instant noodles, your mood is certainly much more pleasant than without the egg. This kind of positive stimulation will subtly transmit to your nervous system.

Changing the Perspective from Which You View Problems

However, the impetus must come from you, and it must be now, immediately. Seth says:

And it must be now, and this must be said in a very real sense, meaning a change in your viewpoint.

What you change is the perspective from which you view problems -- the particular perspective you use to look at the past, the present, and to imagine the future. When this perspective changes, everything changes along with it. It is not a matter of a braised egg, not a matter of an expensive lipstick, but rather a matter of using this action to reinforce your beliefs, prompting you to consciously change the angle from which you look at things.

Seth goes on to say:

In terms of positive experience, you must look within yourself for evidence of what you want.

You want to have money, so what is the evidence? My life has gotten better, the food I eat is getting better and better, the things I use are getting better and better -- this is the evidence. Then keep this in mind, and go back and examine your past, and from the present point of power imagine your future. In this way, at least you are not using the past to reinforce your deficiencies.

It is natural to compare what you want with what you have, but in doing so, you easily become disappointed in yourself. And looking for mistakes in the past does not help you. A correctly used five minutes can do you a great deal of good:

Yet a correctly used five minutes can do you a great deal of good.

In that short span of time, focus your attention on the fact that "the point of power is now." Use five minutes to direct all your attention to "what you want." You can visualize, or you can say it to yourself inwardly, whichever feels more natural. But during that time, do not concentrate on any deficiencies -- concentrate only on your desires.

Be certain that the abilities of your emotions and psyche are focused through the body, and reside at this point.

To put it simply, during these five minutes, inwardly visualize or silently repeat exactly what you want, and place yourself in the state of "I am": "I am very wealthy." Do not think about the gap between reality and the ideal, do not think "I still cannot make it, I am still working a job, only earning this much a month." If you concentrate your beliefs on that, then you are doing it wrong.

So Seth asks: can you manage five minutes? Can you set aside five minutes every day for daydreaming? Give yourself just five minutes a day, allow yourself during these five minutes to be completely unaffected by negative emotions, and imagine freely. I suggest that everyone do this exercise when meditating in the morning, or while resting with your eyes closed on the way to work.

Use all your energy and attention to concentrate on what you want, and then forget about it. Once you have finished thinking about it within these five minutes, do not keep thinking about it; go about your usual business as before. Do not keep checking whether it is working, do not check your bank account eight times a day to see if anything has changed. Once the seed is planted, do not keep digging up the soil.

The key point is this: your intent must be clear. You cannot want this one moment and that the next, with neither desire being strong or clear. In that case it is very hard to manifest.

You will find that those who have never studied spirituality often actually work in this way. Some people who are considered "money worshippers" are obsessed with money to an extraordinary degree, yet in real life they are often very wealthy. The reason is that their goals are extremely clear: they know exactly how much they can earn today by doing this, how much tomorrow, expanding their desires step by step, reinforcing their beliefs every day. But many of us have unclear goals, always saying "I want to live well," "I want to be happier," using very vague and general goals as a placebo for ourselves. Have you ever clearly imagined how much money you will have in the future? How much your personal assets can reach? What kind of life you want to live?

This intent can be changed; you do not have to start with a very big goal, you can begin little by little. But in that five-minute state, it must be clear.

Taking Physical Action

Seth's words here are crucial:

Then in some way, according to your own individual situation, make one physical gesture or act that is in line with your belief or desire.

You cannot just think about it and then do nothing. You must make one physical action that is consistent with your thoughts, beliefs, and desires. What does "physical gesture" mean? To put it bluntly, it means thinking like a rich person and acting like a rich person -- carrying yourself with that air. And at least once a day, the more the better. This action can be very simple:

If you are lonely and feel unwanted, and if you want to change that, you can simply smile at another person.

Or, if you are poor, the action could be buying something that costs ten dollars more than what you would ordinarily be willing to spend. In China, we can equate that to one hundred yuan more. Whatever you buy, make it one hundred yuan more expensive than what you would normally buy, and see what happens. You have to act on faith, even if it is just a tiny change, but it must be a change in a positive direction.

Seth says that this ten dollars will always come back into your life. But you cannot keep thinking like a poor wretch: "Oh dear, I spent ten extra dollars on a meal today. When is that money coming back? Why has it not come back yet? Is Seth a fraud?" If you think like that, the result is predictable. He says you should act as if you have more than you actually do. This is a technique. If you put this chapter into practice properly, see what kind of results unfold.

As far as health is concerned, if a person is unwell, then once a day, in whatever way, act as if you are not sick. When you are sick, you normally face many limitations, but at least once a day, do something that you would only do if you were not sick. This action, combined with the five-minute belief reinforcement mentioned earlier, can sometimes bring astonishing results.

For example, a person is gravely ill, bedridden and unable to move. He can think: "What would I want to do if I were not sick? I would want to go mountain climbing." Then he spends five minutes imagining himself in the state of climbing a mountain. After that, today he struggles to get up and, holding onto the bed, takes two or three steps. He imagines those two or three steps beside the bed as having already climbed to the mountaintop, standing atop the peaks, surveying all the lesser mountains below. Tomorrow he takes a few more steps, and the day after he walks a little farther. He imagines every step he takes in the hospital room as mountain climbing. If you are ill, you can try this and see whether you get better.

But there is one prerequisite. Seth says:

However, such effects will occur only when you stop looking for faults in the past and stop reinforcing your negative experience.

You cannot keep thinking, "Why am I poor? Because my family background is bad, because I do not have a rich father." Looking for faults in the past is useless. By the same token, you cannot think, "I am sick now because my emotions were off before, or because I did something bad." You must stop this way of thinking before the effects can manifest.

Reincarnation and the Present Point of Power

These principles can be used in any area of your life -- not just becoming rich or becoming healthy; someone who wants to become beautiful can use them too. In every area, you are choosing from a world of various possibilities.

Those who believe in the traditional idea of reincarnation may make the mistake of using or blaming past lives:

Believing that you are at the mercy of one past is already bad enough, but thinking that you are helpless in the face of other lives, countless previous errors, will make you feel even more hopeless.

When a person believes that many of the problems in this life are not only because he did many things wrong in this life, but also because he did things wrong in past lives, then he feels there is no hope for him -- because you cannot change past lives either, so of course there is no hope. This deprives the conscious will of its power to act, and deprives him of the ability of his present point of power.

But Seth says that these lives exist simultaneously:

Yet these lives exist simultaneously; they are other expressions of your own self, and they influence each other as each conscious self possesses its own point of power within its own present.

That is to say, if your present point of power is to change, once your beliefs change, it can not only change your present, but also change your past lives. Every reincarnational self in his own life possesses his own point of power, and is exerting force there to change beliefs. These points of power influence each other.

Seth explains why this phenomenon occurs:

It is for this reason that past-life information is so often used to reinforce an individual's social situation.

Just like the past of this life, such memories are also organized through present beliefs. Your past memories and past-life information are all organized through present beliefs. They can be used to reinforce your current social situation -- those successful, joyful, happy memories from your past can all be used to reinforce your present situation. It all depends on how you use them.

If this information is given to you by another person -- for example, a psychic tells you what your past lives were like -- then that person will also select those tendencies that are reasonable to you now, that follow your present belief system. Usually this is unconscious: the psychic does not intentionally follow your intentions, and you do not know either, but the past-life information he gives you is usually organized precisely according to your present conscious tendencies.

Seth gives an example to illustrate this phenomenon:

If a person believes he is basically worthless, he will attract others who give him several lives that rationalize that concept.

He will remember that in several of his previous lives there were similar things. If he believes he must now atone for his sins, that belief will attract and reinforce his memories of those things -- screening out all the meaningful lives of his past lives, leaving only the parts that fit the belief "I am worthless."

If a person believes he is being bullied, trapped in worldly circumstances, unappreciated, and given a hard time by his boss, then he will receive information from himself or others -- perhaps from a psychic, the Akashic records, or the like -- showing that in other lives he received great glory, thereby reinforcing his belief that he "should be bullied even more now." He will feel: "I must have done something great in a past life, or oppressed others, so being bullied in this life is a balancing out."

Seth emphasizes that this is only a general statement, not a specific real example. Everyone has his own different way of reinforcing beliefs; the ways are not necessarily the same, but the purpose is only one: to reinforce his existing beliefs. So if you do not root out a belief, it will find a pile of evidence to prove its own validity. It is a living thing, interwoven with your body and your brain. If you cannot root it out completely, it will come back, using various other small beliefs to slowly circle back and re-establish those erroneous beliefs.

Seth gives the answer to this problem:

The best statement of the fact is that you form your present, your reality, through the intersection of flesh and spirit, and in your terms, the present is your point of power.

What is the fact? The fact is the present. You form your reality, your world, right now -- through the intersection of flesh and spirit, which is your consciousness. Through your belief system, the present is your point of power, the place where you exert force.

Reincarnational Selves, Cellular Memory, and Biological Connections

At this point Rob and Jane chatted about a few things during the break. Seth then continued:

Each of your reincarnational selves has a physical body, just as you do, each with its own point of power and successive moments.

Every one of us living right now possesses our own point of power -- which is "the present." If you string the present moments together, that becomes a continuous succession of moments. At this point of power, you materialize daily life in a linear fashion from among the possibilities available to you. By "linear fashion," I mean it manifests in a way similar to our timeline. Although all of this happens simultaneously, within each lifetime's physical existence it manifests in a linear way -- materializing all your possibilities according to your current belief system, according to the temporal sequence of the human body.

Seth mentioned that he would explain this in another book for those interested in such matters. He was referring to a kind of "coincidence" that exists among all the present points of power between you and your reincarnational selves. He did not elaborate, but in other words, sometimes your bursts of inspiration may be information given to you by another reincarnational self. There is a kind of coincidence in how they interact with one another.

Moreover, Seth said:

In terms of cellular memory, there are even biological connections.

Between the you of this lifetime and a reincarnational self of yours in the Tang dynasty, there may even be biological connections at the cellular level. From the human perspective of time, more than a thousand years separate them, yet within the physical body cells of two different reincarnational personalities, there are even biological connections. Without such connections, it would be very difficult for you to acquire certain skills that require muscle memory or cellular memory -- these are not transmitted through knowledge alone.

Seth added a note: if you want to look into it, you can refer to the content of Session 653 in Chapter 13. So, within our own time and space, you can, through your current beliefs, attract these other selves -- those reincarnational selves that share certain experiential tendencies, certain abilities, specialties, and attributes.

Seth said:

Within this multidimensional point of power, there is a constant interplay. In your terms, a physically embodied self can draw from all of his selves, according to his clear, localized beliefs, all the abilities he wants.

It must be clear. You not only have the abilities of your "probable selves," but also the abilities of past lives, the lives before those, all your lifetimes -- all can be drawn upon. Of course, this ability is continually acquired along with the raising of your spiritual level, the intensity of your desire, your focus, and the capacity of your conscious focus. He said:

These selves are different counterparts within your animality, experiencing physical reality.

You are still experiencing physical reality, but in different bodies, different times and spaces, different material worlds. But at the same time:

Your body itself shuts off the simultaneity of experience.

Your physical body cannot experience this simultaneous experiential nature -- you cannot feel the experience of that Tang dynasty self of yours. But this does not mean you cannot perceive that simultaneity on other levels; you still have nonphysical ways of perceiving it.

Generally speaking, events appear to occur in a series -- the time, space, and environment may differ, but the nature or type of the events is similar. Seth said:

In quite real personal and racial terms, the past is still happening, and you are creating it from the present according to your beliefs.

You create your past according to your present beliefs. A removed appendix will not reappear in the body, because there are certain frameworks that are accepted, innately present within your animality. In our physical framework, there is no way to bring back a removed appendix; but in other frameworks, it is acceptable for the appendix to grow back -- it just does not happen in our three-dimensional world. This framework that can accept the possibility of "the appendix not having been removed" exists within our physical bodies.

What Seth means by this passage is that this possibility is extremely vast -- according to your present beliefs, you can not only change your personal past and your previous lives, but all of humanity can also change the past of the human race. But from the perspective of our physical bodies, this change is subject to certain limitations (for example, an appendix once removed is removed), while at the same time it is extremely free. Where does this possibility exist? It exists within your physical body. Your body itself has the ability to accept the occurrence of all kinds of possibilities.

To put it simply, you are inherently complete and self-sufficient. This framework that can recombine the abilities you want from all the memories of past lives exists within every person's body, and everyone can use it. How you want to organize the past, create the past, or even create the future -- the degree of freedom of this ability is far greater than you imagine. Even at the level of your cells, that degree of freedom is greater than you think. Going back to what was said earlier, your past lives and present life can be explored not only through spiritual means; they have biological connections in cellular memory. So Seth is telling you: cells are far freer than you think, and all your past-life memories are held in your cells -- you just do not know it. And the way they remember is not the kind of memory your brain assumes it to be.

Rob's Note and Our Attitude

That is as far as this session goes. Later, Seth will also talk about the specific details of how to use these methods. Here there is a note from Rob himself -- his inspiration was that what Seth said about the point of power in reincarnation, cellular memory, and coordination points are indeed related. Because in Chapter 5 of Seth Speaks, it was said that these coordination points also serve as channels through which energy flows, that they are "warp surfaces" from one reality to another, or invisible pathways -- you can understand them as wormholes that cross different times and spaces. They also act like transformers, supplying most of the initiating energy; in the appendix of Seth Speaks, this issue was also specifically discussed, just like black holes and white holes continuously generating energy so that creation can continue. These points, to use human terms, impinge upon what you call time and space. Rob mentioned that you can refer to Session 593 in the appendix of Seth Speaks.

This is Rob's own inspiration. Personally, I feel that placing this here is not quite appropriate; the key point of what Seth said about coordination points is not this meaning. Rob wanted to use coordination points to explain how cellular memory between past lives and the present life occurs. But as far as I recall, Seth did not separately address this issue again later. If we have time, we can discuss it separately, and we can also expand our own imagination to speculate. But if you are not interested in this, do not worry about it, because it is not the key point of the issue.

Be sure to remember: this kind of "how is it realized," "how is it completed," "how is it done" is not the focus of our attention. It transcends the limits of human understanding and thinking ability -- this is not me making excuses for myself, nor making excuses for you; it really is so. When we reach a very high spiritual level, we can discuss this issue at a higher level; but while we are still in the physical body and still communicating through language and words in this actual situation, let us not discuss this issue for now, because it cannot be made clear through language.

The core of today's session is just one point: the present moment is your point of power. Seth has already given many specific methods of operation -- a five-minute exercise, paired with a small practical action. I hope everyone can put it into practice in daily life, starting from today. I also hope everyone can share with us the actual changes, cases, and experiences that occur.

Hypnosis: A Clear Demonstration of the Point of Power

Seth says in the book that any good hypnosis demonstration clearly shows that the point of power is the present, and that beliefs dominate your experience. The hypnosis referred to here includes both stage-performance hypnosis and the hypnosis used by psychotherapists in treatment.

There are many methods of hypnosis, and many master hypnotists. For example, there is Rick, who was known as the number one hypnotist⁸, but he has passed away. His student Stephen Gilligan took his teacher's theory of hypnosis a step further, and his theory is very close to Seth's material⁹. If you are interested in hypnosis techniques, you can search for Stephen Gilligan's methods; they are fairly close to Seth's entire theoretical system. There was once an interview on YouTube where Liang Dong interviewed Stephen Gilligan, and they did three or four episodes, each about 15 to 20 minutes long¹⁰. If you are interested, you can search for it and see his understanding and views on hypnosis; it may completely change some of your ideas about hypnosis.

Seth goes on to say that hypnosis itself can clearly demonstrate that the point of power is in the present, and can show you that beliefs dominate your experience.

There is no magic in hypnosis. Hypnosis has no magic; it is not the way you think of as magic. No. It is just hypnosis, and every one of you uses it constantly. It is only when it is given a specific procedure, and when it is taken out of normal life, that hypnotic suggestion seems so mysterious.

What he means is that in everyday life we are constantly using this kind of hypnosis, but because it is so tightly integrated with life, we cannot discover that it is a part of life. Yet when hypnosis is put on a stage as a performance, or placed in a psychologist's office, you feel that it is so magical and wondrous. But what is it really? It is something that happens to you every day.

A well-structured hypnosis simply allows the subject—that is, the person being hypnotized—to make full use of concentrated power.

What is called good hypnosis simply allows the person being hypnotized to make full use of concentrated power, which is your point of power in the present, thereby activating the unconscious mechanisms. It is like the five-minute daily exercise we mentioned earlier. What does that five minutes have you do? Concentrate power, concentrate focus. On the surface, during those five minutes you seem to do nothing, except daydream and fantasize, as if you did nothing at all. But what is it actually doing? It is activating your unconscious mechanisms. On the unconscious level, it has already activated energy flows, connections, and mechanisms that you simply cannot discover or understand.

However, in the organized process there can also be distortions, as well as misunderstandings on the part of the practitioner—some misunderstandings held by the hypnotists themselves. Their understanding of hypnosis has not yet reached a very high level, and these misunderstandings make the phenomenon seem to present a different face. This hypnosis performance could have been a positive and highly effective demonstration of "the present is the point of power," because you are completely following the activation of unconscious mechanisms after concentrating your consciousness, as if you are moving according to the hypnotist's guidance, but in fact you are entirely guided by your own beliefs. Yet in this state, what is clearly the best evidence that "the present is your point of power" instead makes you feel as though you are not in control, as though you are being guided and controlled by someone else, guided and controlled by the hypnotist, as if it makes you feel even more powerless and passive.

That is, the person being hypnotized completely agrees to accept the hypnotist's beliefs.

It seems that once you accept the hypnotist's beliefs, the hypnotist will lead you forward: take you back to childhood, take you here, take you to see past lives and previous incarnations, as if you are being influenced by his beliefs.

Since telepathy exists, then this hypnotized person responds not only to verbal commands, but also to the hypnotist's unspoken beliefs.

Telepathy does indeed exist, and it exists even more so when you are hypnotized. So he does not only use language to guide you, or commands to direct you; he also directs you through telepathy.

Session 658

Of course, this proves the hypnotist's theory about what his profession is.

Hypnosis shows, in condensed form, clearly, how your beliefs behave in normal life -- in a very short time, it shows you how beliefs influence your behavior in your ordinary daily life.

The various methods simply focus all your attention in one particular area while excluding any distractions.

What are all the various hypnotic methods doing? They focus all your attention in one particular area while excluding any other distractions. The hypnotist uses all sorts of methods: a swinging watch, a pendulum, or some object for you to stare at, or a pen waved back and forth in front of your eyes -- these are all ways of inducing hypnosis, ways of getting you to focus your attention in one particular area. What I just mentioned are only some of the most basic, elementary methods. Many master-level hypnotists are so skilled precisely because they can hypnotize you without your ever noticing it -- in the course of ordinary conversation and chatting with you, you have already been hypnotized, and you have no idea at all. They can even hypnotize thousands of people at once, without any formal procedure, just by communicating with everyone, like giving a lecture, walking back and forth on stage with a microphone, and before long the entire audience is hypnotized.

Actually, Seth has already explained the principle of hypnosis very clearly: focus all your attention within a very narrow range, exclude everything else, and that is where hypnosis begins.

Your beliefs act like a hypnotist. As soon as a particular suggestion is given, you automatically, your automatic experience conforms to it.

There is something very interesting: when you are under hypnosis, the hypnotist will suggest: "All right, I am now taking you back to your childhood. We see the place where you went to school as a child. You are now walking into the schoolyard, and you see a child playing on the playground. Walk over and see whether it is your childhood self." With this kind of guidance from the hypnotist, what happens to the person being hypnotized? He enters completely into that scene. At this point his eyes are closed, and he is leaning back against something or half-lying somewhere. In his mind, in his entire experience, he really has gone back to the past, back to that elementary school playground of his childhood, and he really sees his childhood self. All of this is real. If you have ever been hypnotized, you know that all of this is a real experience, everything is very real. Then within the scene you will have various emotional feelings: perhaps you will cry, laugh, even feel fear -- all sorts of things can happen. The experience is so real that your body will have all kinds of reactions, just as if you were actually there.

This state is as if you are being guided by the hypnotist into the scene carried by the hypnotist's suggestions, and you experience it. In life, your beliefs are like a hypnotist. They give you specific suggestions, causing you to automatically experience those experiences that conform to the suggestions.

Those experiences automatically conform to it. Your automatic experience just comes automatically, just like hypnosis, and you automatically enter into that kind of scene.

What is the one suggestion that can bring about a breakthrough?

That I create my reality, and the present is my point of power.

In your daily life, your beliefs are like a hypnotist. You are passively guided by your beliefs, as if led through life by some unknown force and hand from somewhere unseen. At this point, what kind of breakthrough can you have? You can break through the hypnotist's limitations -- in other words, break through this way of being given instructions. Although these instructions are given by your beliefs, you are passive. Many of us feel that our lives are passive, and indeed that feeling is real, just like being hypnotized by someone else -- except that you are hypnotized by your own beliefs. At this point, if you want to break through yourself, it is very simple: just give yourself this suggestion: I create my reality, and the present is my point of power -- the present is the point from which I exert force, the point from which I create my reality. At this point you can free yourself from the state of being as if hypnotized by life.

If you do not like the effect of a belief, you must change it.

If you do not like the result or effect brought about by a belief, you must change it. Because manipulating the external circumstances themselves cannot free you. You cannot release yourself through manipulating external circumstances.

If you truly understand the power of your actions and decisions in the present, you will not be hypnotized by past events.

Your past events were all formed by previous beliefs. The environment around you is already the result formed by past beliefs. If you want to change, if you do not want the present results or environment, you must change your beliefs. You cannot change things by altering these so-called material things around you, because these things are only the manifestations of beliefs. You can only change your beliefs, and realize the results you want in a new environment. You cannot exert effort on old, already existing things, because that will only keep your focus on the things you do not like, and keep you entangled with them.

Think of the present as a pool of experience drawn from many sources.

If you think of the present, of the now, as what? A pool of experience into which many sources, many faucets, are pouring water. This pool contains every kind of experience: joy, happiness, pleasure, despair, pain, sorrow -- all of it.

In your terms, it is fed by tributaries from the past as well as from the future.

It has both past and future tributaries, all kinds of tributaries and all kinds of faucets -- this faucet is labeled past, that faucet is labeled future, pouring water into this pool. Whatever is poured in is what you experience. There are countless such tributaries, meaning there are countless possibilities all within this pool of experience, and you select among them through your beliefs. Through your beliefs you choose which things are in your pool of experience and adjust their flow -- whether you let more happiness or more pain in depends entirely on how you choose their flow.

For example, if you constantly focus on beliefs that your early background was harmful and negative, if you always focus on the belief that "my early experiences were painful and these negative things," then only that kind of experience will flow from the past into your present life. Then you say, "But my life is full of trauma" -- using such words to reinforce this belief is useless. You must adjust that conviction -- change this belief. Change what belief? Namely, "my life is full of trauma," because this is a belief from the past. Your life is full of trauma, you suffered many hurts in the past. If you still hold on to such a belief, then that hurt will continue to exist.

Or better, change it entirely, for you will never escape its effects otherwise.

Otherwise you will never escape the effects of that negative belief. This does not mean lying to yourself -- wanting to escape this belief does not mean telling yourself lies.

But if it seems to you that there is no joy, no achievement, no pleasure in your background, then you are now lying to yourself.

If you think that in your background there is no joy, no growth, no achievement, no success, no pleasure, then you are actually lying to yourself right now -- you clearly have these things, yet you say you do not. Your focus on the negative has reached such a degree that anything else seems invisible.

See Chapter Eleven, Session 644, where this issue will be discussed. You have now hypnotized yourself.

Do not see the past as it was once experienced, but as it appears in the light of your present beliefs.

The experiences and memories of your past -- those are what you experienced in the past. You do not see the past as it was once experienced, but as it appears in the light of your present beliefs. In other words, what kind of colored glasses, what kind of belief system you use to shine on the past determines what kind of past you see. That past is not the past as your present beliefs perceive it. That past also contained joy, achievement, and pleasure, but you cannot see them. You only see the trauma of childhood, the pain, the torment, the oppression, the suppression, the school bullying, the parental and family -- all you see is the negative. If all you see is the negative, then that is not real either. You have already reconstructed it. You have reorganized your past.

Therefore I ask you to restructure your past. It is not asking you to do things you never did -- those joys, those achievements, you have them all. They are not things you never did; you did them. I am only asking you to see them again. It is not as you think, that your past was all pain.

Again, hypnosis is simply a state of concentrated attention, in which you focus upon beliefs.

Hypnosis is a condition of concentrated attention, a state, and in this state of concentrated attention, you focus upon your beliefs.

Popular performances have led people to believe that the hypnotized person must be asleep or completely relaxed. This need not be so.

During performances, the hypnotized person must appear to be asleep, or must be completely relaxed. Actually, that is not so; it need not be so. A true master does not need this when hypnotizing. He can hypnotize you in the very instant you are awake. In fact, in our lives, we are being hypnotized at every moment. We do not need to enter sleep or relaxation in order to be hypnotized.

The only prerequisite is intense concentration upon specific input to the exclusion of everything else.

This is being hypnotized. Taking the input you receive -- the material others instill in you -- and concentrating on it to a certain degree, focusing only on this one thing while excluding everything else: this is being hypnotized. So in your life, when you see the negative emotions of your childhood or early life, and cannot see the joy, happiness, and pleasure, you are being hypnotized. In other words, your present life is being hypnotized by you, because you are focusing only on one particular thing and cannot see the others.

The command given is therefore crystal clear, with no conflicting data received, and no contrary information.

The command you receive is crystal clear: "I will only look at negative things." So you can only see negative information. You do not see conflicting data, nor contrary information. Why? Because you are in a hypnotic state. The instruction you give yourself is "I am traumatized, my childhood was tormented, I was a child who was not loved by my parents, whom my parents disliked and found annoying." This kind of hypnotic method can only produce this kind of result. At this point the command you give is crystal clear, with no conflict, so you will not receive contrary information. Just like when a person is hypnotized, whatever the hypnotist tells him to do, he does, and he absolutely will not resist the hypnotist -- the reason is simple: because your attention has been concentrated to a certain degree.

He has explained the negative side clearly. So if we use this in reverse, can we achieve the results we want? If bad things can be realized in this way, then can good things equally achieve good results?

The exclusion of extraneous data to narrow your focus are the two most important ingredients.

For hypnosis to achieve its effect, there are two most important ingredients: first, exclude other data; second, narrow your focus.

Relaxation helps only because the body's messages are quieted, and the mind no longer attends to them.

Making you relax or loosen up is simply to make you stop attending to the body's messages, to let the body relax completely, so that your mind, your consciousness, will no longer attend to those bodily signals. This is still narrowing your focus and excluding extraneous data.

Many beliefs were originally accepted in just such a situation, with no formal induction, but under appropriate circumstances.

Where did many of your present beliefs come from? They were all accepted in similar situations, just like a hypnotist hypnotizing you and giving you instructions. And no one gave you a formal induction -- not like a hypnotist saying "Please relax, look at the object in my hand, then listen to my instructions. I will now count to three and you will fall asleep" -- there was no such induction, but a similar method was used.

What kind of method?

A period of panic, which causes an immediate acceleration of attention.

When you panic about something, you will definitely focus. For example, when you panic that the boy or girl you like is going to break up with you, you will definitely focus intensely on this matter; when you panic that your future income may be in trouble, you will definitely focus on how to solve the income problem. This brings about immediate focus and acceleration. All energy is immediately mobilized. What does the energy do? Focus. Usually, however, there is little relaxation. When you are ordinarily hypnotized, it is not in a relaxed state, but in such a state that you are hypnotized -- your beliefs are implanted in this way. On the other hand, when you are in shock, or after being anesthetized with anesthetic drugs during surgery, the conscious mind appears asleep or dulled, and beliefs can also be instilled. The focus of attention is narrowed and intensified, and you concentrate only on certain areas.

One problem is that too sharp a distinction is made between the conscious and unconscious minds. They should be overlapping.

The problem is that too sharp a distinction is made between the unconscious and conscious minds. They will tell you how hypnosis should be, how relaxation should be, how consciousness should be. Actually, the conscious and unconscious should be overlapping, not separate. It is not that you can only be hypnotized in an unconscious state; you can also be hypnotized in a conscious state.

Hypnosis, properly used and without the nonsense usually attached to it, is an excellent method of removing old beliefs and inserting new ones.

The premise is to remove all the nonsense attached to the traditional understanding of hypnosis. Returning to the most essential aspects of hypnosis, there are just two points: exclude other data, and concentrate your energy on a very narrow focus. When you achieve these two points, you can use a very good method to replace old beliefs with new beliefs. Now think about the five-minute training method Seth mentioned in the previous session -- what is it doing? He is using those five minutes to hypnotize himself, which then brings about changes in the inner unconscious system.

However, only when you realize that at that time, the power of the conscious mind -- when you realize that at that time you are being hypnotized, when you realize that at that time the power of your conscious mind is the power of the present point of power. Why must it be at that time? Because at that time your consciousness will be concentrated. Your energy and power are all concentrated on that point, on the point of what you "want," on the point of your desire, on the point of your dream -- that is your point of exertion, that is your point of power.

You must realize, must understand, and must know your conscious mind's ability to mobilize unconscious responses. You must understand that you mobilize your conscious mind, focus your conscious mind on a certain point -- for example, thinking only about a certain thing, and then excluding other negative emotions and negative influences -- when these two conditions are both present, you have mobilized your unconscious abilities, mobilized your inner self's abilities. You must believe in it. Only then can the ability to mobilize the inner self truly be realized. It is not a matter of saying, "What use is my idle fantasizing?" If you think, "What use is my idle fantasizing?" then you have not realized at all what he means. You have no idea what the function of your idle fantasizing is. What is the function of idle fantasizing? It is to mobilize your inner self's abilities. As for how the inner self's abilities are realized, that is not your concern.

The Unconscious Is Not a Sponge

Before you try the methods I have suggested, Seth says it is extremely important to understand the following points.

First of all, you must understand that your unconscious is not a sponge, indiscriminately accepting material without regard to the considerations of your conscious self.

You must understand that your unconscious is not like a sponge, absorbing water when given water, absorbing whatever it is given. No. In the region of your unconscious, all beliefs or suggestions are first filtered through your conscious mind -- your conscious mind has to screen them. Whatever your conscious mind does not agree with or does not accept cannot enter the region of your unconscious. So why are your conscious beliefs so important? Because they are the sieve.

Only those that you accept are allowed to penetrate into the other areas of the self.

Only what you accept can enter the deeper levels of your body. So this outer conscious mind of yours, this outer belief system of yours, is your first line of defense.

Therefore no negative belief can be imposed upon you against your conscious will.

Many people say, "I have no idea where negative beliefs come from, and I do not know who imposed them on me." He says no, that is impossible. They can only come in through your conscious permission.

Nor can any belief that you do not consciously accept force itself upon you or harm you.

Now, in formal hypnosis, the hypnotist and the person being hypnotized are playing a game.

If the hypnotist commands the subject to forget what happened, the person will pretend to do so.

The hypnotist says, "Forget all these painful experiences from your childhood," and the person says, "Fine, then I will forget them." Under the hypnotist's suggestion, he seems to forget. In fact, this is like playing a game -- both of them hold the belief in this subsequent forgetting. The hypnotist and the person being hypnotized both say, "It can be erased." Both sides believe you can erase it, and what is performed is the power of your belief, so you really do have it erased.

If you have ever watched a hypnosis performance, you know the hypnotist's role seems enormous: "I will make you erase the memory from five minutes ago." After the hypnosis, you really do erase it. Ask you about the matter again, and it is as if you never experienced it at all. For example, you have already eaten, and he makes you erase the memory of eating, and you feel, "I have not eaten yet." If you have seen hypnosis performances, you will see many very funny things -- the person has actually just eaten, but the hypnotist tells him to erase that memory, and he erases it. What is being performed here? The power of belief. You clearly did eat; that was an experience. Yet your belief makes you believe you never ate at all, and you want to eat another meal. That is the power of belief.

Yet this is taken as an indication that the conscious mind is usually helpless in such circumstances, and that is not the case at all.

There is no lead given, and you hypnotize yourself into all of your beliefs.

In a hypnosis performance, you are given the feeling that you have no initiative of your own at all, that you are completely controlled by the hypnotist, that whatever the hypnotist tells you to do, you do. But what is actually happening? You are playing a game with the hypnotist. In this game, the two of you have set a rule: I say that in the game I will pretend to make you forget, and you really do forget; he says fine, then I will forget. This is a mutual consensus on "forgetting this matter," or both sides, under their belief systems, recognize that they have the ability to forget it. The hypnotist is deeply convinced of this, and you, in the hypnotized state -- this state of high concentration, this state of extremely narrow focus -- you fully accept your own beliefs. At this point it is demonstrated that in this state your belief really can change everything, so you really do forget the matter. This itself is meant to prove the energy of belief and the power of belief, but during the hypnotist's performance, the audience is given the impression that this person has no subjective initiative of his own, that he is completely manipulated and passive. That is not how it is. You must understand it in reverse.

In the usual circumstances, in daily life, no one is led, and you lead yourself, hypnotize yourself, into all of your beliefs.

In daily life, you need no lead. You automatically hypnotize yourself into all of your beliefs, and following the instructions given by those beliefs, you manifest in your life everything those beliefs want you to manifest. Belief is like giving you a command: if the belief says your childhood was painful, then it manifests that your childhood was painful, and all your memories are that your childhood was painful; if your belief tells you that you are now a financially strapped person, a very poor person, then your actual situation now is that you are very poor -- it manifests in your life. You will hypnotize yourself into all of your beliefs. You must remember this.

This only means that you have consciously accepted them, and concentrated upon them.

You yourself have already consciously accepted these beliefs, and concentrated on them, excluding contrary material. Then you focus your interest on these particular points, thereby activating the unconscious mechanisms. Once you have focused your interest, you activate your unconscious mechanisms, and once activated, they begin to manifest. The things that manifest then manifest in real life those things you firmly believe, which further proves the correctness of your belief, and makes you even more convinced of your perception of that belief -- look, I believed I was a poor person, and sure enough, I am a poor person.

Formal hypnosis merely brings an accelerated version of what is always occurring.

Hypnosis is merely taking the things that happen in your daily life and bringing you an accelerated version, a condensed version, a version you can see in a live performance.

It is a perfect example of the immediate effect of present belief upon past belief.

Seth says belief creates reality. If you want to create a good reality, change your beliefs. Many people say my beliefs are very hard to change, and hypnosis is a perfect example that lets you immediately see that your beliefs can change. The hypnotist tells you to forget, and you forget; the hypnotist tells you to do something, and you do it -- and in all of this, it is your own belief at work. The audience thinks it is not my belief at work, it is the hypnotist who is powerful, the hypnotist who is skilled -- but actually it is all your own belief at work, and you just do not know it. The hypnotist simply makes use of this point to make you think he is very powerful. So using present belief to negate past belief is possible in theory, possible in the ideal, but rarely seen in practice. Hypnosis lets you truly, immediately, instantly see a perfect example. Seth's point in talking about hypnosis here is to tell you that your beliefs really can change immediately. He also gives you time -- if you cannot change immediately, that is fine -- but he lets you see an example: hypnosis is such an example, letting you see a living example of belief being changed.

I will give you some practical methods that will allow you to alter your own beliefs and experience.

In the previous session, Seth gave a five-minute method, plus an actual action, which is very practical. In the next chapter he will have some other methods for you to apply in practice.

I am telling you this method, what your personal beliefs show you, how those personal beliefs attract you to joy or to disaster.

He will show you and explain it to you.

We will also discuss how group beliefs bring you together during great celebrations, how you gather to celebrate and rejoice, or together become victims of disaster, or become survivors of disaster.

He will introduce and show us all of this later, showing how individuals and groups are attracted and influenced by beliefs. Those occasions originally seemed to have nothing to do with you -- including our current pandemic situation, which seems as though it should have had nothing to do with us before, yet now it is really happening around us.

Let us first discuss hypnosis, a quite natural hypnosis essence.

Later I will introduce a method. First we need to discuss the nature of hypnosis -- not hypnosis under guidance, but hypnosis in life, and the way you are using it now. How to use hypnosis to change our beliefs and attract what you want. Then you will see how at the point of power in the present, you can quite easily and deliberately make use of it -- make use of this point of power in the present. This is what the next few chapters will cover, so the content that follows is all very important.

Seth said back in Chapter Fourteen that Chapter Fifteen would be relatively short, but actually it is not short at all -- it runs a full three sessions. We have now finished interpreting this chapter and this session.

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注释与核实

1. Conversations with God, by Neale Donald Walsch. ↩

2. Source: Wikipedia, "A World Without Thieves" (https://zh.wikipedia.org/zh-hans/%E5%A4%A9%E4%B8%8B%E6%97%A0%E8%B4%BC) ↩

3. This claim could not be verified. ↩

4. Source: Kumarajiva's translation of the Diamond Sutra (Taisho T235) (https://lapislazulitexts.com/tripitaka/T0235-LL-vajracchedika/) ↩

5. Source: Bloomberg, "Tesla Overtakes Toyota as the World's Most Valuable Automaker" (2020) (https://www.bloomberg.com/news/articles/2020-07-01/tesla-overtakes-toyota-as-the-world-s-most-valuable-automaker) ↩

6. This claim could not be verified. ↩

7. According to Mike's original words, it was "Lu Xun's novel Xianglin Sao"; upon verification, it should be "Xianglin Sao is not the title of a book, but the protagonist of Lu Xun's short story The New Year's Sacrifice; The New Year's Sacrifice was published on March 25, 1924, in The Eastern Miscellany, and later collected in the story collection Wandering." (Source: Wikipedia, "The New Year's Sacrifice (novel)", https://zh.wikipedia.org/zh-hans/%E7%A5%9D%E7%A6%8F_(%E5%B0%8F%E8%AA%AA)) ↩

8. According to Mike's original words, it was "Rick, known as the number one hypnotist"; upon verification, it should be "The person known as the father of modern hypnosis and the master hypnotist under whom Stephen Gilligan studied is Milton H. Erickson (1901–1980, died March 25, 1980, in Phoenix, Arizona), not 'Rick'." (Source: Wikipedia, "Milton H. Erickson", https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Milton_H._Erickson) ↩

9. Source: Milton H. Erickson Foundation, Erickson Congress, "Stephen Gilligan, PhD" (https://www.ericksoncongress.com/stephen-gilligan-phd/) ↩

10. Source: Zheng'an Culture · Zizai Shuijiao, Life · The Awakened, Liang Dong in conversation with Stephen Gilligan (https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=tINm-C5Pxu0) ↩