The "Introduction" and "Chapter Highlights" for this chapter were summarized by an AI editor based on the main text below; they are not words spoken by Mike during his lectures. The main text comes from Mike's commentary, and the blockquotes are Seth's original words (the portions Mike read aloud).
Introduction
This chapter uses children's games and merry-go-round experiences as examples to explain that reincarnational experiences are like different events occurring simultaneously, each life independent and without karmic retribution. Illness and difficulties are not punishments from past lives, but results chosen by present-life beliefs; people create their own reality and should face their own beliefs directly rather than blame others. Finally, using the spouse of an alcoholic as an example, it shows that unhealthy intimate relationships likewise reflect the constraints of belief, and change must begin with oneself.
Key Points of This Chapter
- Experiences in children's games are just as real as everyday events, and reincarnation can be compared to different experiences occurring simultaneously.
- All events happen at once; events in one life do not cause events in another life, and there is no karmic retribution.
- The reasons for illness or difficulties almost always lie within the experiences of this present life, brought about by one's own beliefs.
- You create your own reality; difficulties or illness are your own choices, accumulated from many small choices.
- An unhealthy intimate relationship is also a form of unhealthiness, and change must begin with yourself rather than with changing others.
Main Text
We continue sharing the first part of Chapter 8 of the Seth material, The Way Toward Health. The title of this chapter is "Children's Play, Reincarnation, and Health." This chapter begins with the session of May 22, 1984, which was a Tuesday afternoon at 4:24.
On May 20 at 4:20, Jane gave a brief summary about free association. Two days earlier, Jane had discussed a positive, active, energetic dream. Jane said that dream was his celebration of his body's abilities -- he insisted that his body was functioning superbly, and he thought he had not used his body's abilities. In the dream, he asked his body to forgive him, to forgive him for not using his body's full abilities. Then Jane said, "I gave it freedom to move, gave the body freedom to move, and now I have been miserable all afternoon." That is to say, in free association, Jane told his own body, asking it to forgive him for not letting the body move, for not giving it freedom to move. He felt he should apologize to his own body. And could his uncomfortable state possibly be the body having heard Jane's apology and reconciliation with his own body?
Jane was accustomed to thinking: if I keep using my body, I will not get things done. That is hysterical, because now I do almost nothing. What he meant was, he used to think that if he let his body do as it pleased -- do whatever it wanted, move whenever it wanted, go out and play whenever it wanted -- then would he go around playing everywhere, and not be willing to write books and do these "serious things"? Jane considered himself a restless person, unable to sit properly at a desk and write books. So he suspected that if he trusted his body and let his body move, would he be unable to write any books at all? He himself knew this view was indeed hysterical thinking -- how could that be possible? But he now also saw that, conversely, now that he did not let his body move, he could not write much of anything either. Apart from transmitting a little Seth material every day, he could do almost nothing anymore -- he used to be able to write his own novels, to write his own works.
He used to think that if he trusted his body and let his body play, he would not be able to do serious things; now he did not trust his body and did not let his body move, and he could not do anything either. Jane was in just such a state of anxiety and regret. He did not know whether his body would fully recover -- he was still not certain, he was rather unsure whether his body could recover. Yet he truly believed he could straighten his broken leg. I would instead suggest that he understand: his good left leg was currently in a position where it could be straightened. Although the right leg could not straighten much, the left leg was fine -- he had not thought of that. He now truly believed that physical recovery was safe -- he had previously thought the body was rather unlikely to recover.
Jane felt some emotions that he refused to think about -- he was very stubborn. He knew those emotions, but did not want to consider them. Then Rob wrote down one sentence: "He began some projects involving his entity so late in his life." This sentence carries an extremely strong implication. It means that when Rob wrote this sentence, he also knew Jane's days were numbered, otherwise he would not have said "so late in his life." Actually, being in one's fifties is -- especially for some people on a spiritual growth path -- it is very normal to have just awakened in one's fifties. Confucius included, he only understood many truths at fifty, the so-called "at fifty I knew the mandate of Heaven." The so-called "knowing the mandate of Heaven" means that Confucius began studying the I Ching at fifty, and only after studying it did he understand: so this is how the universe is. So it is very normal for many people to begin their true life only at fifty. But Rob's sentence was very strange -- he said "so late in his life," meaning he was already near the end. So Rob had an intuitive sense about Jane. Although he himself did not know it when he wrote that sentence, it was very subtle.
"He began some projects involving his entity" -- only at such a late point did he begin to involve projects of his entity, that is, to consider what his true self really wanted to do. Before that, he had been doing things under the control of the ego. The ego believed that one must do something in order to live, otherwise one's own life had no value. And "doing things" included writing books and transmitting material. He believed that even though he had rebelled against the Catholic Church, he had also misled the public -- he thought the things he transmitted were not necessarily correct, because the shadow he had received from the church since childhood made him feel that as long as he did not follow the church in spreading those contents, his material was not orthodox. This was his ego at work. He was truly not together with his greater self, not fully letting his body be free, not fully letting his thoughts be free, and not fully trusting and accepting what he himself did.
Rob asked: why did Jane only realize this at such a late stage of his life? Only realize that he should stop paying attention to the ego's affairs, and focus only on that entity -- that larger self -- to realize his value? Jane said, "This is the result my problem has brought about." He believed his problem had brought about a result -- namely his emotions, those emotions he had felt earlier. But Jane refused to think about them. Then Seth mentioned the concept of punishment: "There is some concept of punishment underlying this, and we must explore that concept of punishment more." Jane used suggestion -- he asked his mother to forgive him, and then he also forgave himself. Seth believed this almost necessarily involved punishment. When this was brought up, Jane became quite tense and irritable. Because it touched on some underlying beliefs and emotions of his. Seth said, "I know there is something there" -- through Jane's emotions, he could discover that the beliefs related to the concept of punishment had content.
This afternoon, Jane happened to tell me several times that he had received the title of the next chapter of the Seth book. Then Jane began to speak the next session. Seth came through and said, "Now I wish you a good afternoon." Then Jane said, "Good afternoon, Seth." Seth said, "We will begin a new chapter, titled 'Children's Play, Reincarnation, and Health.'" Then he asked us to wait a moment.
When children play, the play events are often as real as, or even more real than, the ordinary physical world experienced outside the play framework.
Children's play is taken seriously. Unlike adults, who know it is a game and therefore do not play well -- children take every game seriously as they play. They are truly afraid, truly nervous, truly invested. When children play cowboys and Indians, or cops and robbers, they may sometimes become as frightened by the chase or pursuit as if they had really been caught up in such an adventure in their daily lives. For example, when children roughhouse, and someone really tries to catch him, his feelings and experience are exactly the same.
I do not know whether everyone has played such games -- including adults. If you have played, for example, there is a game called CS battle, which simulates CS. Each person is given a simulated gun, some laser-based, some paintball-based, and then divided into teams, simulating the rules of the computer game, with both sides capturing the flag or protecting something. Those who have played it have the experience; those who have not may not know what I am talking about. Those who have played will find it very realistic -- that feeling of your heart racing, that fear of being discovered by the enemy, the tension and excitement of crawling forward on the ground and concealing yourself, is not much different from the real thing.
Yet children use their imaginations more vividly, even using all of their senses.
Children not only use imagination, but also bring all their senses into play. When we use imagination, we only think with our minds -- he adds bodily sensations into it, following or strengthening the pictures given by imagination, using the body's senses to mobilize the body, joining it into this imaginative game.
Indeed, there are many kinds of reality, many versions. And there was much time before humanity learned to concentrate its focus upon one particular package of reality.
This sentence means that before this human version focused the attention of reality only on the physical world, there were many other human versions. In those versions, certain versions of humanity did not focus their consciousness only on the physical world, but focused on a broader world that included energy and consciousness. And we current humans, very unfortunately, for the most part focus only on the physical world. In the previous history of human civilization, there were many other versions.
And as you did so, they then used their imaginations in a structured way, helping to reinforce the primary structure of reality.
They began to use imagination in a structured way. Imagination itself has many ways of being used, and is basically unstructured -- unrestrained and freewheeling is unstructured; structured means having logic. Humans use logic and structure to reinforce the structure of reality. Other versions of humanity did not need to use this method; they used other methods to reinforce that structure of reality. What we humans are good at is using logic, that is, cause and effect, to reinforce this reality.
For a while, however, young children avail themselves of a remarkable freedom of imagination, so that they can experience substitute events with the same focus, the same force and vitality with which they experience daily life.
This is an ability possessed by certain versions of humanity. But many children, young children, can make use of this ability. What ability? They can, in the same way they experience daily life, with the same focus, the same sense of force, the same vitality, experience a pretend game, or a game scene that children play, or an imagined event.
In fact, a powerful daydream may seem far more real than the other daily events surrounding him.
If you have ever had a daydream or a lucid dream, you will find that dream so real -- even much more interesting than the things you experienced in the morning, and much more real, fresh, and effective. On the contrary, the morning's experiences, compared with this vivid daydream, seem somewhat pale.
When the child is playing, he has a strong sense of joy -- remember -- a very strong sense of joy, anger, or danger. The child's body often reflects the reflexes that would occur if the so-called play events were real.
His bodily reactions are exactly the same as the reactions he would have in a real situation in the same scene.
Most of your experience happens directly, in the physical reality where it occurs, where the senses, imagination, action, and physical certainty meet.
"Meet" means to merge together, to mutually confirm and merge. That is, your senses, your imagination, your actions, and the certain responses of your physical senses -- the body's sensations of cold, heat, pain, muscles, heartbeat, sweating, these bodily feelings -- and your imagination and your actions are completely integrated and merged together.
In dreams, however, you often feel as if you are entirely in another world, and all of your senses revolve around that location as their center.
In dreams, you often feel as if you are entirely in another place, and all your senses revolve around that world, that scene in the dream. In other words, your experience is separated from your ordinary life. You may dream that you are walking, running, or flying, yet those activities are far away from the region where imagination, action, and physical certainty meet -- far away from the experiences and feelings in your ordinary real events. Because relatively speaking, your body remains quiet, and in dreams, while sleeping in bed, it is also very quiet, while at the same time it seems you are freely moving about somewhere else. In that world of the dream, you run, jump, talk with people, play games, and so on, all normally, but in the real world, your body lies quietly in bed -- as if you have another space, and in that space you move about freely.
This is indeed the case. In a way, our reincarnations can also be partially explained by a similar analogy.
If you do not understand the concept of reincarnation, you can use the way of dreaming to understand it. You have many existences at the same time, many versions and fragments of yourself, each with its own area of life, each with its own time and space.
The portion of you that is focused upon it -- that is, the reincarnated portion -- focuses upon its own reincarnated world, its own time and space, its own area of life. In fact, that portion has its own name and confidence, and is the master of its own castle, so to speak.
In that reincarnation, you have a name different from this life, and you also have a different confidence -- you have, so to speak, completely become another person. You are the master of the castle in that world -- "master of the castle" means "my world, my rules," in that world you are the master. Every reincarnated self can be understood in this way.
Each self has its inviolate point.
What is the inviolate point? It is that each self, in its own world of imagination, in its own castle, in its own reincarnated world, is not affected by outside influences. What he means is that this reincarnated life of yours will not be affected by other reincarnated lives -- this is called inviolate. It is not that a past life influences this life, or that a future life influences this life, or that this life influences a future life. There are connections, links, and mutual relationships among them, but not a point that is influenced or violated. That is to say, each independent reincarnation, in its own world, that personality, that identity, is the absolute king, the absolute master of the castle.
There, imagination, action, and physical certainty intersect. But like children's play, events happen within a world, all dramatically real and vivid, all inducing specific reactions and actions, and each possesses its own private area of life.
Just like children playing games, within play events there can be various plots, stories, and so on, but those are only placed within the play events. It is like dreaming -- dreaming itself is an event, and within this event of dreaming there are many, many dream stories and plots, with countless events inside. What he means is that events happen within events, and each event is like an independent time and space, or he calls it a private, independent area of life, or a fragment. You can imagine it as a transparent, jelly-like sealed time fragment -- with a certain thickness, for example, suppose this thickness is two hours, and within this two-hour thickness of time, many, many other events happen. And the things that happen within this translucent or transparent time fragment or event will not be violated by other events. Within this event, it is completely independent, completely private.
This is the first point he wants to emphasize: events within events will not be affected by events outside this event. He will tell you below that there are indeed inner connections among them, but that connection is not the crude kind of intrusion into the events within an event that you imagine. The events within this event are safe. In other words, in this one life within this reincarnation, you absolutely have this free will and independent right, independent control, and will not be affected by another reincarnated you suddenly barging in to change the things of this life.
He talked about reincarnation through children's play, and then the dictation ended. Seth said:
I do want to begin this chapter. Again I accelerate the coordinates that are conducive to the self's healing abilities, peace of mind, and enlightened understanding, and I wish you a good afternoon.
I ended at 4:45. Today Jane was again very uncomfortable, especially when lying down. This morning he also took a special medication, and in the afternoon, while we were there, he took it again.
Let us look at the next session, May 23, 1984, Wednesday, at 4:31 p.m. Rob began by saying that this morning he had made an adjustable reading stand for Jane to use in bed, and in the afternoon brought it to Room 330. Jane could use it in a certain way, but not as well as he had hoped, though it helped. He was still sometimes very uncomfortable, and now took this medication called diver sent every four hours. Then Seth said, "Now I again wish you a good afternoon," and then directly began the dictation related to the book.
On any given day, a child may ride a merry-go-round. The same little boy or little girl may also sit astride a toy horse, pretending that the horse is part of the merry-go-round.
What he means is that on any given day, a little boy or little girl may very likely be sitting on a merry-go-round in a park playground. It is also possible that he is not sitting on the merry-go-round, but on a single little wooden horse at home, but can imagine it -- or pretend -- that this wooden horse is one of the horses connected to the merry-go-round, also turning along with it.
The same child may very likely see an image of a merry-go-round on the television screen. Or be told about another child who went to the playground and then rode the merry-go-round.
On television or on a phone, he may also see a video of a merry-go-round, an image. Or he may hear that some other child went to the playground and rode the merry-go-round.
And the child will be completely absorbed in the direct experience of the merry-go-round. The boy or girl may indeed be equally absorbed, or even more so, in imagining that he or she is riding such a spring horse.
Whether seeing that image, whether hearing about another child going to play, whether he himself is really riding it, or whether he is at home riding a single non-rotating wooden horse -- whichever of these four scenes it is, for this child, if his imagination is rich enough, if he invests all his emotion in it, he may even find the feeling more real and more exciting than riding the actual merry-go-round.
He will, of course, have some involvement when the child watches the image of the merry-go-round on television. At the same time, the matter of another child going to the playground will not interest him as much.
Watching others ride the merry-go-round on television, he has a lot of vicarious involvement; but hearing that the neighbor's child went to play, his vicarious involvement is not as strong.
In somewhat the same way, events appear and are reflected in the existence of reincarnation.
Our reincarnational experiences are similar to this. All lifetimes happen simultaneously, just as the hypothetical child's merry-go-round experiences all happen on the same day. What he means is, suppose this child goes to the playground to ride the merry-go-round, and this child on another day rides an ordinary little wooden horse at home, and this child sees on television the image of others riding the merry-go-round, and he hears that the neighbor's child went to the playground to ride the merry-go-round -- suppose these four scenes happen on the same day, then this is very much like our reincarnational lives. We think there is a past life, a present life, and a future life, but in essence, they are all happening simultaneously.
For example, in your past life, you once had the experience of riding a merry-go-round; in this life you have not ridden one, but you played with a little wooden horse your father bought you; in a future life, you may wear VR goggles and experience a merry-go-round through virtual reality. These three different experiences are all about the merry-go-round, but the experiences are different. And these three experiences can be understood as happening simultaneously -- just like this child's four different scenes of experience, although they appear at four different points in his life, we can understand them as actually happening simultaneously.
Let me give another vivid example. When we shoot a film, a certain outdoor scene, such as a scene at the seaside, may appear three times in the movie: at the beginning, the middle, and the end. At the beginning, the male and female leads meet; in the middle, they are passionately in love; at the end, they may break up, leaving only one person coming alone to the seaside. These three plot points appear at different points in time, but when the film was shot, the director shot them on the same day -- he would not shoot the beginning, then go to the seaside again for the middle, and go again near the end of shooting. To shoot these three shots, the director shot all three at the seaside in one go. And this actor had to go through these three different emotions, from first meeting, to passionate love, to final breakup, but it all happened on the same day. When the film is released, it appears as if the male and female leads experienced the complete process of their relationship from beginning to end. Such an example can help you understand: in the reincarnational lives of lifetime after lifetime, the appearance of many scenes suggests that in other reincarnations there are also events related to this theme happening.
However, in terms of reincarnation, the merry-go-round event may be a direct experience in some existences; in another life, it becomes like an image -- as I said, experienced through watching a movie, or through VR goggles. There is also a possibility involving a real horse, not a merry-go-round, but riding a real horse -- growing up on the grasslands, raised on horseback. In other words, the events experienced in one life will in some way be reflected in the events experienced in another life.
Then everyone will ask: does this mean there is cause and effect, or karma, among them? Seth said:
I am not saying that events in one life cause events in another life. But I am indeed saying that there is an overall pattern, a storehouse of probable events, and in each life, each person chooses those probabilities that suit his overall private purposes.
Seth said there is no causal relationship -- events experienced in this life causing events in another life to happen, there is no such thing. But Seth said, what I want to tell you is that in this event (such as the merry-go-round event), there are many possibilities, and which possibility you choose to let happen in this life depends entirely on your overall and personal purposes. "Overall" means that of the larger entity, and "personal" means that of this life. Whichever one you choose must satisfy both needs at the same time. How can it satisfy both at the same time? It can do so simultaneously -- just as it can satisfy not only the two of them, but also others. That is, on the level of value fulfillment, it can not only complete one's own personal value fulfillment, but also complete the value fulfillment of that larger self, and also complete the value fulfillment of other individuals.
Those lifetimes, however, will be connected.
All possibilities are there for you to choose -- according to the needs of this life of yours, and also according to the intent of your larger entity. That is, the joint choice of the higher self and the ego.
Seth gave an example:
A person may have a serious illness in one life. In another life, that event may become an uncomfortable nightmare. In still another life, the person may have a good friend who suffers from the same illness. And in yet another life, the person may decide to become a doctor, to find a cause and a cure for the same illness.
Regarding the matter of illness, there are many possible versions, but the theme is all centered on the experience of that illness. He changes roles to experience it: himself as the patient of that illness, himself as the friend of the patient of that illness, himself as the doctor treating that illness, himself as the person who gets seriously ill in a dream -- all four of these scenes are possible.
No one, however, is predestined to suffer for any sins committed in another life.
This is stated very clearly: no one will suffer because of any sins committed in another reincarnated life -- that is what we ordinarily call karma, cause and effect, or retribution. There is no such thing; there are only possibilities.
In any life, the reason and purpose for a person's own existence can be found directly within that life itself.
The reason and purpose for a person's existence are found directly within that life -- do not drag in past lives, do not drag in past incarnations, reincarnation, and these things. Many things happen in this life of yours, and each thing is one of the many possible versions of that thing. Why did you choose this possible version to let it appear in this life? Because it fits the purpose and will of this life of yours -- and that reason lies within this life. Do not say the previous life, the life before, or the life before that -- it has nothing to do with them. That other life chose that version because that personality fragment of that life wanted to choose that version to experience that; and you chose this version because you yourself chose this. It is not that someone else chose the good ones and left the bad ones for you, or that that person chose the bad ones and left the good ones for you -- it has nothing to do with any of that. Do not go looking for those very strange reasons.
Then he paused for a long time, and said this last sentence recalled an essay he had written for Dreams, "Evolution," and Value Fulfillment. Then the dictation ended again. At 4:48, he said:
I wish you a most pleasant afternoon. Even if the session is short, I would like to continue the dictation. Once again, activate the coordinates that speed up your own healing potential and promote happiness, peace, and a calm state of mind.
The session was short, but still very meaningful and very important. At 4:49, Jane said, "I think that is it." Before I turned him onto his left side, he smoked a cigarette, and he was not very comfortable.
That brings us to the end of our reading of the first part of Chapter 8. This part presented a reincarnational viewpoint -- through a child's game and the metaphor of riding a merry-go-round that we can all understand, it lets us understand the relationships involved in reincarnation. Only then can we go on to discuss its connection with health and illness. Because many people believe that their illness comes from past lives, or from karmic cause-and-effect retribution. And here Seth explains this matter clearly and plainly -- it has not the slightest thing to do with that; it is only a choice among many probabilities, and it is based on one's own will and purpose, nothing else.
Let us continue sharing the second part of Chapter 8 of the Seth material, The Way Toward Health. This part began on Saturday, May 26, 1984, at 4:03 p.m.
At the beginning, Rob said that yesterday he received a copy of an article sent by psychologist Sam Manahan1 from Fort Lee, New Jersey, a lengthy review written for the paperback edition of The Changing Reality. Today he brought it to Room 330 so that Jane could read it. Dr. Manahan very favorably compared the Seth material with several schools of psychology, and Rob told Jane that he hoped this article would show him that the general validity of his work would continue to grow. Jane liked the article and also agreed that the influence of his work would continue to grow.
Actually, Jane needed others to give her affirmation. But this kind of comparison, or comparing the Seth material with other schools of psychology, actually did not understand the essence of the Seth material at all -- the Seth material does not have that much of a relationship with psychology.
Rob said that when he wrote back to Dr. Manahan today, he told Jane that he wanted to pause today in order to catch up on other matters, but he also told Jane that if she wanted to have a session, he was prepared to have one. Then Seth came through and said, "I wish you a pleasant afternoon."
Seth has been pressing ahead with the book's progress recently; he wants to transmit the health-related content first.
Misconceptions About Reincarnation and Disease
Many people who embrace the idea of reincarnation firmly believe that most of the diseases in a given life have their roots in past lives. Therefore, to discover the reasons for a present illness or predicament, regressive hypnosis into past lives is considered necessary.
People who believe in reincarnation all believe this. This is strange; it seems to have become something bound up with reincarnation -- as long as you believe in reincarnation, you must believe in karma and retribution and all that, as if the existence of reincarnation were for these purposes alone, rather than for adventure, exploration, and experience. As if reincarnation existed to manifest these retributions and punishments, and that were the whole meaning of reincarnation. This completely misunderstands any concept related to reincarnation.
Reincarnation is simply experiencing different versions of an event within different systems of experience, or in different directions, or through different methods. It has not the slightest connection to punishment, guilt, karma, or retribution.
And these people who believe in reincarnation, their most commonly used method is regressive hypnosis -- taking you back to a past life, seeing some events in that past life through hypnosis, and then far-fetchedly and arbitrarily declaring, "See, the illness in this life of yours was caused by such-and-such behavior in your previous life." They see some things from a past life, and then they interpret them using their own understanding, their own set of reincarnation theories. So what the events of a previous life were is not important -- what matters is how you interpret them. And their version of interpretation is always within this same framework.
Along with such a belief, there may be quite a bit of tradition, yes, rigid versions of karma that have existed for thousands of years. So you may be punished in this life for mistakes made in a past life, or you may actually be making amends for wrongs done thousands of years ago.
Again, it is true that all of a person's reincarnational existences are connected.
Remember this: all of a person's reincarnations are connected.
But the events in one life do not cause the events in the next life.
This life is this life; do not say that it will cause the next life. The experiences of your previous life are also not the cause or reason for the experiences of this life. Each life is each life, as if encapsulated within a certain event. The small events encapsulated within an event are relatively private and independent -- although they are connected, there is no causal relationship between them.
Why is there no causal relationship? Because they occur simultaneously. A group of simultaneously occurring events has no cause-and-effect relationship between them.
I must remind you once again that all events occur simultaneously.
So this confused concept that "present punishment comes from past retribution" is actually meaningless. Since it is within simultaneous time, all actions occur at the same time. Because of simultaneity, the so-called relationship of retribution, of cause and effect, that you believe in does not exist.
As for why time all occurs simultaneously, the Seth material explained this very early on. If you still cannot accept or understand this point, then you may need to reread the earliest Seth material -- you may have missed or skipped over much of the core thinking of the Seth material.
You may, however, have an overall reason for a particular illness that has nothing to do with sin and punishment.
As mentioned in the previous session: perhaps you wanted to be a patient, or a doctor, or a friend of the patient, or a patient in a dream -- you wanted to experience or feel a certain illness from various angles.
Instead, it may involve an extraordinary sense of curiosity and a desire for experience.
Here it is more a sense of curiosity -- your curiosity about the illness, your desire to experience it from different angles. This desire is somewhat unconventional -- rarely does anyone say, why would I pursue the experience of illness.
A certain exoticism.
This "exoticism" is something he mentioned in earlier discussions of reincarnation; it is a broad reference, not necessarily meaning exoticism in the literal sense, but rather that anything you have not experienced, you want to try.
It is like when we live in one place for a while, we want to travel, to go somewhere else and take a look. Actually, what you see when you go somewhere else is also the ordinary lives of ordinary people; it is just a change of place. But you still want to go see it, you still want to experience it. And what is the reason for this desire to see and experience? It is exoticism -- its root is that it is different from your current life.
He uses this example to tell you: you can understand each of your reincarnations as going abroad, or going to another world or society, to experience this exoticism. You can imagine it as a very long trip abroad -- perhaps as long as ninety years -- just to experience this exoticism. If you understand it this way, it becomes easier to grasp the essential meaning of reincarnation, which is a mindset of curiosity and the desire to experience.
Or in a manner of speaking, even bizarre.
Of course, from the perspective of a three-dimensional person, this seems impossible -- if I want to experience something, of course I want to experience something good; why would I experience illness. But if you look at it from a three-dimensional perspective, you consider illness to be bad. From the spiritual perspective, from the perspective of the soul's main body, this illness is not bad at all; it is simply feeling and experiencing something different, and experiencing it from various angles.
Whatever its nature, each life possesses its own unique, powerful position.
Each life is unique.
And sometimes a person may take on an unnamed illness, or a long-term illness, simply to give himself experiences that most others would avoid.
Why do some people get unnamed illnesses -- illnesses for which no cause can be found? One of the reasons is that because the illness is unnamed, and because no one else has had it, no one else has such an experience, and this is his unique experience.
An individual may seek such a vantage point in order to view the universe in a different way.
For example, some people may view the universe from the angle of being unable to walk, from the position of being unable to move; some people may experience this universe through being unable to hear or speak, seeing what the cognition and perception of the universe is like when the ability for verbal communication is lost.
It is like when we were children, we often played games, such as all of us not speaking, using behavioral patterns and body language beyond words to see whether we could keep going for an hour or two. If you can understand that this is a game, without carrying a strong negative belief, not that I want to punish myself by not speaking -- if you can understand this, then you understand why some people are born deaf and mute.
Ask, and from any other position, the question perhaps could not be answered.
Ask the universe from a certain specific angle, and this angle cannot be answered from anywhere else. For example, if someone gets leukemia, then he wants to see this world from the angle of a leukemia patient, and this angle is something that people without leukemia cannot understand.
He gives the example that another life may deal with excellent health and vitality, and in yet another life one may appear in the healing arts -- for example, through various methods, using painting to heal others, which is also a form of art therapy.
But by and large, few people take health problems themselves as a frequent reincarnational theme.
Few people take health as a reincarnational theme.
Although in a scenario where a person is born as one of the many poor and humble common people, there may be strong hints of this theme.
That is to say, although some people want to reincarnate to experience the lives of the many poor and humble common people, the experience of ill health often accompanies that -- but he is not doing it to experience ill health; he is doing it because he wants to experience the life of ordinary people. And ill health sometimes happens to become a major part of the normal life experience of such poor and humble common people.
If you have health problems, look for the reasons in your own immediate experience, which is far better than assigning them to a cause in the distant past.
If you have health problems, please look for the reasons within this life of yours, and do not trace them back to a previous life or several lives ago; that is meaningless.
The reasons for illness almost always lie in the experience of the present life.
The reasons for illness basically all lie within this life, unrelated to other lives. Here, to avoid some exceptions, he uses the word "almost."
And even if childhood events may originally have initiated unhealthy behavior, it is the present beliefs that allow the old behavior patterns to operate.
It may be that some things that happened in your childhood may have initiated or caused certain unhealthy behaviors, but you have indulged and allowed these behavior patterns to continue operating in your present -- this is the root cause of your illness, not the things experienced in childhood or adolescence. Those things are neither right nor wrong, and the behavior patterns you formed in response to those things should have been discarded once those events passed. Yet you have carried those old behavior patterns all the way into today, and this is what you should change -- not that the events themselves have any problem.
He says, "Please wait a moment, we will continue." At 4:22, Jane took a sip of coffee and smoked a cigarette, and began again at 4:28.
You Create Your Own Reality
If you are concerned about any given problem concerning mental, emotional, or physical matters, you should remember certain facts. I have mentioned most of these elsewhere, but they are especially important in this context.
If you want to discuss any given problem—a particular problem—you should understand some basic facts. These facts have been mentioned repeatedly in other material, but in the context of health, they are even more important.
Here are the facts:
You create your own reality. Because of your beliefs about it, you create such a reality.
So try to understand that the particular predicament of the illness is not an event imposed upon you by some other agency.
Your illness is not something imposed on you by certain people, including your past-life self, or some past experiences, or so-called retribution and karma. None of that.
You must realize that to some extent, your predicament or your illness is something you have chosen.
When you become aware to a certain degree, you will be able to understand that this is your own choice—that you have this illness, or that you are in a certain predicament, is your own choice.
And this choice was made bit by bit, through choices so small they seemed unimportant.
You say, I did not choose—we would not choose to be sick, and I would not choose to be in today's predicament. Yet these things that seem not to be your choice are indeed made up of countless very small everyday choices, bit by bit. In other words, there are countless patterns of behavior behind them making the decisions.
Yet each small choice you paid no attention to has led to your present predicament, whatever its nature.
Every small choice, whether its nature is good or bad, will lead to it. You say, but this choice was to my advantage, my choice could not possibly be a choice to my disadvantage—so how is it that every small choice that was to my own advantage, when added together, becomes a choice so much to my disadvantage? This is what many people cannot understand. That final phrase, "whatever its nature," is exactly what he wanted to say.
If you understand that your beliefs form your experience, then you do indeed have a very good chance of changing your beliefs, and therefore changing your experience.
If you can understand how your life experience is generated by your beliefs, and understand the principles and operating mechanisms behind it, then you can change your experience through the simple method of changing your beliefs. If you do not understand, it will be very difficult for you to change your beliefs.
Being very honest with yourself, you can discover your own reasons for choosing that predicament and illness. Since your intentions were very good when you made each choice, you have no reason to feel guilty. It is simply that the choices were based on beliefs, and those were beliefs rather than facts.
What he means is, do not feel regret or self-blame over past choices, and do not use them to judge yourself—thinking, how could I have made that choice back then—none of that is necessary. The choice you made at the time was certainly the decision that seemed better for you at that time. But the choice you made then was based on a certain belief, and that belief was only a belief; it was not a fact. It had nothing to do with facts—but in most people's lives, we treat all beliefs as facts.
Then he said, "We will continue the dictation in the next session, and once again, for the two of you, I activate those coordinates that accelerate your own inspiration, revelation, and self-healing," and then he thanked Seth. At 4:44, within three minutes since the last break, Jane had already been interrupted twice.
Rob said it felt like there was a large block of material, and Seth even had more. But it was late, the dinner tray would be coming, and Jane had to be turned over, and so forth. Rob could see that Jane had the ability to continue, and thought she would answer some of the key points the psychologist had written in his mind. Jane said she felt the same way, and she felt a bit better today—that may have been one reason for the longer session. Since she had not taken the medication this morning, that was an improvement. The other vitamin supplement Jeff Karder had prescribed for her, a pungent colorless liquid that smelled like orange peel, had been started a few days ago after the blood test, and Jane disliked the taste intensely.
The Predicament Is Caused by Your Own Beliefs
On Monday, May 28, 1984, at 4:08 p.m., Seth said again, "Now I wish you both a good afternoon once more. Well, we will continue with the dictation."
If you are in any kind of serious predicament, at first it may seem incomprehensible, unbelievable, and very humiliating to imagine that your problem is caused by your own beliefs.
You are already in a very difficult situation, and at this point you still have to make yourself believe that you chose it and caused it yourself -- this kind of realization, at the very beginning, you cannot accept, cannot understand, cannot believe, and even find it very humiliating: I myself caused today's predicament? Many people cannot accept this.
The reason many people cannot change the current state of their predicaments is that, first of all, they do not admit that they themselves caused it. The reason they do not admit they caused it is that they believe it was caused by others, by external factors, by accidents, by other people -- and if that is the case, then it must be changed by other people, not by themselves. And whether other people can change it depends entirely on other people, not on themselves. In this way, their predicament gets stuck there, gets jammed there.
And in fact, the opposite may appear to be true. For example, you may have lost a series of jobs.
What does "the opposite is true" mean? It means you think that the external environment is the fundamental cause of your current predicament -- that is, losing your job is the cause of my current predicament. And what seems possible, what seems very clear, is that you lost your job, and that led to the predicament -- in any of those situations, it was not your fault. My losing my job was not my fault; it was the larger environment, all kinds of reasons.
You may have a serious illness that seems to have come from nowhere, and you may feel that your own beliefs could not possibly have anything to do with the onset of such a frightening disease.
You may have contracted a very serious illness, but you do not believe that you yourself are the source that caused this illness. You feel, how could that be possible -- how could I get this kind of disease, and moreover, that I caused it? Would I be trying to kill myself?
You may be in one or several very unsatisfactory relationships.
Whether it is a work relationship with colleagues or an intimate relationship, all of them are very unsatisfactory to you. Not a single relationship satisfies you, and you are the cause, you are the source. You always say other people are the reason, other people caused this unsatisfactory relationship -- it was so-and-so who did such-and-such, so-and-so has bad character, and that caused our relationship to deteriorate drastically. You never think that you caused the discomfort or dissatisfaction in this relationship, that you played the leading role in it.
At the same time, you may instead feel as though you are a dissatisfied victim or participant.
You do not think of yourself as the originator of this event; instead, you think of yourself as a victim of the event, or merely a participant.
You may have a dangerous problem with drugs or alcohol.
For example, you have been drinking heavily all along, or using some kind of drug.
You may be married to someone with such a problem.
You married someone with these problems, and for your whole life you have been affected by these alcoholics or drug users in your relationship and family.
In both of these examples, the situation was caused by your own beliefs.
Whether it is the serious illness mentioned above, or your marrying someone who drinks heavily or uses drugs, both of these examples were caused by your own beliefs, by what is in your own mind. Even though at first this may seem very impossible -- you would think, how could that be, how could I make myself get this kind of serious illness, how could I be the cause of my being together with someone who drinks or uses drugs?
For this particular purpose, we will discuss the case of illnesses that begin in childhood. Again, I will slowly make clear to you why it is you. Therefore, we will not include congenital disabilities, or very early childhood accidents that threaten life, or the most unfortunate childhood family situations; these will be discussed separately.
We will not discuss those severe congenital illnesses and severe early childhood family problems; we are talking about the most ordinary and common problems, while those special problems will be discussed separately later.
After a long pause at 4:19:
In most cases, most even of the most severe illnesses, or complicated life conditions and relationships, are caused by an attempt to grow, develop, and expand in the face of many difficulties that appear more or less insurmountable.
Whether it is a severe illness or a very difficult life predicament, it is caused by your having an attempt to grow, to develop, to expand. In other words, you want to develop and expand under a severely difficult condition -- this was your original intention and attempt, to see how bad the environment can get and still be able to grow.
An individual is often striving toward some goal that appears blocked.
For an individual, he is often tripped up by certain things that are stuck. For example, if he does not do well in his studies, that is what blocks him; some people have social anxiety and poor interpersonal relationships, and they feel this is what blocks them, so they keep working at it; some people feel that being overweight is a problem, so they keep working at it.
And therefore he uses all the energy and strength available to him to get around that obstruction. That obstruction is usually a belief that needs to be understood and removed, rather than bypassed.
I hope you can follow Seth's logic here. Generally speaking, the things a person spends the most energy and greatest effort on are usually precisely those things that block his development. And these obstacles are what he should face directly, understand, remove, and cross over, rather than bypass.
To put it simply, returning to the essence of human nature: a person will only spend a lot of energy on the things that block him. And at this time, your life setup will block you precisely on the things that need your attention and need your energy, so that you will invest your energy in them. And all you need to do is face these problems directly, solve them, cross over them, rather than bypass them or avoid them.
So these stuck points in your life, these predicaments, these illnesses, are all points that you yourself set up for yourself, points where you need to redouble your efforts and cross over. That is to say, you designed a very big assignment for yourself, and you need to complete this assignment yourself. If you did not design such an assignment, you would not complete it -- because without getting this illness, you would not make any effort, investment, or give any attention related to health. This can only be obtained through getting the illness. Or conversely, other ways also work -- if you are a doctor, you do not need to get this illness, and you can still give a lot of attention to health issues.
You set this up for yourself, because if you did not set it up this way, you would not put your focus and attention on this matter.
In this book, we will deal with the nature of beliefs, and with the various methods that will allow you to choose those beliefs that lead to a more satisfying life.
You can choose a belief system that leads to a satisfying life, and then directly make your life more satisfying to you.
Although this book is titled The Way Toward Health, what we are discussing is not only physical health, but also mental, psychic, and emotional health.
Health in Intimate Relationships
The example he gives next is a heavy one:
If your intimate relationship is unhealthy, unsatisfying, frustrating, or hard to achieve -- no matter how strong your physical condition is -- you are unhealthy. Remember this sentence: if your intimate relationship is not good, not satisfying to you, not something you enjoy, not something that makes you comfortable, not something that pleases you, not something that makes you feel at ease, and such an intimate relationship still continues to exist in your life, then no matter how healthy your body is, you are unhealthy. Because your spirit is unhealthy, your psyche is unhealthy, your emotions are unhealthy.
I hope everyone takes this seriously. Many people cannot understand it. Including when we are in class, including when I do one-on-one counseling, many people cannot understand why we always focus on your emotional relationships -- always saying you should go fall in love, you should love others, you should love yourself -- always saying that if your intimate relationship does not satisfy you, you must change it. Many people do not understand: I am just here to learn, I am here to cultivate myself, I am here to raise my own level of awareness, so why does it have to be tied to intimate relationships? I do not even want to think about this issue. I have no intimate relationship, and I do not need one.
Actually, Seth has already answered this question here. He has already made it very clear, so there is no need for me to say more. So everyone must take this seriously: if your intimate relationship is unhealthy, disharmonious, unhappy, unfulfilling, or even nonexistent, dried up, withered, or avoided, evaded, rejected, or even worse, filled with fear, shame, or guilt -- then you are an unhealthy person.
Whatever your situation is, and everyone's situation is different, ask yourself: if you were not bound by it, what would you do? This is a good idea.
You are in a bad intimate relationship, yet because of this intimate relationship you have bound yourself. The relationship is not good, but it has tied you down. And at this time you need to think: if you were not bound by it, what would you do? What options would you have?
Many people cannot do this -- "These few words, intimate relationship, have caused me to be very limited and very constrained in my choices on many issues." For example, whether male or female, one must be very cautious and careful in intimate relationships, one must never casually start an intimate relationship, especially for girls, one must choose the right person -- all of these things are constraints.
Now ask yourself: what would it be like if there were no such constraints? In other words, if your intimate relationship no longer existed, if there were no such intimate relationship, how should you live? An intimate relationship that makes you uncomfortable, unsatisfied, and unhappy -- if it no longer existed, how would you live?
When you ask this, you will find, to your great horror, that you need this relationship. Whether you admit it or not, such a bad intimate relationship is actually the one you dare not let go of, the one you actually want. When you see clearly from this angle, you can understand: do not blame others, and do not blame anyone -- your current predicament is your own choice. Do not blame your partner. It was you who chose to be with him, it was you who chose to maintain the intimate relationship, it was you who chose to be bound by the intimate relationship, not someone else.
The example he gives next is very meaningful. I hope everyone can see their own reality clearly by understanding this example.
The wife of an alcoholic man may wholeheartedly wish her husband would stop drinking. But if she suddenly asks herself "what would she do," she may be surprisingly seized with a wave of panic -- suppose you had no husband, or suppose you ended this intimate relationship, what would you do?
Do not keep aiming at "I hope my husband stops drinking" -- you are placing expectations on someone else. Now ask yourself: you are the wife of an alcoholic, your husband gets drunk every single day, and when he is drunk he either hits you, scolds you, or makes a scene, and he is completely unreasonable. So if such an intimate relationship, such a family, were ended or left behind, what would you do? In other words, do not expect your husband to make any changes, do not pin your hopes on the alcoholic himself making any changes. Now ask yourself: what are you going to do? Do you want to keep living with him? If he does not change, how will you still live?
Do not place your hopes on getting others to change.
Then, when this wife examines her own thoughts and beliefs, she may discover that she is so afraid of not achieving her own goal. What is her own goal? To wholeheartedly wish her husband would stop drinking -- that is her entire goal, and the meaning of her life is to wholeheartedly wish her husband would stop drinking.
This point is very subtle. Do you think she wishes her husband would not drink? No. What she wishes is to become the person who stops her husband from drinking. She wishes to play a role from a moral high ground, to maintain a good piece on the chessboard of good behavior -- this is what I want to achieve. I am a wife with excellent self-conduct and excellent moral character, and the purpose and meaning of my existence is to correct my husband's alcoholic behavior.
Under such a demand, if her husband really stopped drinking, then the meaning and value of her existence would be gone -- because her only demand is to stop her husband from drinking.
Do you understand the underlying logic here? It seems she does not want her husband to drink, but this belief itself actually causes her to encourage her husband to drink, to encourage her husband's alcoholism -- because she does not have to face her own failure. What is her own failure? It is the failure to be this defender of morality, this maintainer of good behavior, this image of a good wife. Because she can only demonstrate the meaning and value of her existence, and demonstrate how good her behavior and morality are, by correcting her husband's drinking. If her husband stopped being an alcoholic, this goal of hers could no longer be achieved -- to her subconscious, this is a kind of failure, because she can no longer find the meaning and value of her existence.
Many people do not understand and do not believe how a wife could be like this. Let me put it the other way: why do you not leave him? If you did not want to stay here correcting an alcoholic husband every day, why can you not leave this alcoholic husband and leave this family? You say I have children, I have family constraints, and so on. Now I ask you: if you removed these constraints, what should you do? This is exactly what Seth said earlier -- set aside these so-called social, moral, and ethical constraints of yours, and what you are facing is an alcoholic husband. What is the correct thing to do? Is it to stand beside him correcting him?
Think carefully about this question: are you pinning your hopes on his changing, or are you changing yourself -- either accepting him, or leaving him. In front of you there are only these two choices. And the vast majority of us choose a third path: to change him, to change others. Whether you accept him or you leave him, these are both choices you can make, and they are the only choices you can make. And wanting to change him is the choice you should least make -- the thing you should least do is change others.
So through the analysis of this small case, you will know what points you have not yet discovered and not yet seen in your spiritual learning and growth. This short passage is actually, for many people, truly a trigger point in their lives, a miracle. If you truly understand the real meaning hidden behind this passage, then the sense of power in your life and the change in your life circumstances can happen in an instant.
I hope everyone can take this story, this example, and apply it to themselves. When we study the Seth material, one of the most effective and direct methods is to apply every example to yourself -- no matter how uncomfortable and painful it is, put yourself into it: "I am exactly that kind of person." Look for yourself in your current life, analyze your own beliefs, analyze who caused your current predicament. Just ask yourself this question: who exactly caused it? When you figure out this principle, when you truly recognize that it was you yourself who caused it, only then can you possibly change, only then can you possibly turn it around.
Obviously this hypothetical situation is an offhand example of what I mean, and it does not touch upon the countless other beliefs or half-beliefs that would surround the relationship between that man and that woman.
Seth says again that this is just a casual example. As for whether their problems and their relationship should continue, that also involves very personal and specific topics between the two of them, and there are many other beliefs and half-beliefs that need to be analyzed and discussed.
The dictation ended at 4:36.
But again, I have indeed accelerated those coordinates of your own healing abilities, inspiration, and revelation. I really do very often look after you both. Now I wish you both a most wonderful afternoon.
Then Jane thanked Seth. At 4:37, Jane said, "On those days when I feel I do not want to have a session, you can rest. But on days when I feel I want to have a session, I think we should." Rob asked her directly, "Do you feel you should have a session, or do you want to have a session?" These two points are crucial -- is it wanting to have a session, or feeling that you should, that you must have a session? These are not the same.
Jane's answer was very interesting: "Both. When I want to do it, I want to do it." She laughed.
Indeed, there is no need to keep agonizing over it. Some people are always analyzing: should I do this out of a sense of responsibility and mission, or do I actually want to do it? Jane gives you an effective answer here: stop distinguishing between them -- both are yours -- these two are together. Is it a sense of mission driving you to do it, or do you really have this sense of mission and want to do it? This is meaningless. It is like asking a bodhisattva: do you want to save all sentient beings, or do you really have this sense of mission to save all sentient beings? For a bodhisattva, these two are one and the same, not contradictory.
Rob said that when he read this session to Jane, she smoked a cigarette. He thought it was a very good session, and he was certain it contained many things that applied to their situation. Rob also had very deep insight.
So although the content of this second session of Chapter 8 is not much, the core message and core ideas it conveys are very important. I hope everyone can go back and understand it repeatedly, especially in connection with your own life experiences -- whether you have health problems, problems in life, psychological problems, or problems in intimate relationships, I hope you can carefully read this session again from beginning to end.
注释与核实
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This claim could not be verified. ↩