Altering a belief by substituting its opposite

Your beliefs always change to some extent. As an adult you perform many activities that you
believed you could not as a child. For instance: You may at [the age of] three have believed it
was dangerous to cross a street. By thirty, hopefully, you have dismissed such a belief, though it
fit in very well and was necessary to you in your childhood. If your mother reinforced this belief
telepathically and verbally through dire pictures of the potential danger involved in street crossing,
however, then you would also carry within you that emotional fear, and perhaps entertain
imaginative considerations of possible accident.

Your emotions and your imagination both follow your belief. When the belief vanishes then the
same emotional context is no longer entertained, and your imagination turns in other directions.
Beliefs automatically mobilize your emotional and imaginative powers.

Few beliefs are intellectual alone. When you are examining the contents of your conscious mind,
you must learn, or recognize, the emotional and imaginative connotations that are connected with
a given idea. There are various ways of altering the belief by substituting its opposite. One
particular method is three-pronged. You generate the emotion opposite the one that arises from
the belief you want to change, and you turn your imagination in the opposite direction from the
one dictated by the belief. At the same time you consciously assure yourself that the
unsatisfactory belief is an idea about reality and not an aspect of reality itself.

You realize that ideas are not stationary. Emotions and imagination move them in one direction or
the other, reinforce them or negate them.

Quite deliberately you use your conscious mind playfully, creating a game as children do, in
which for a time you completely ignore what seems to be in physical terms and 'pretend' that what
you really want is real.

If you are poor, you purposely pretend that you have all you need financially. Imagine how you
will spend your money. If you are ill, imagine playfully that you are cured. See yourself doing what
you would do. If you cannot communicate with others, imagine yourself doing so easily. If you feel
your days dark and pointless, then imagine them filled and joyful. Now this may sound
impractical, yet in your daily life you use your imagination and your emotions often at the service
of far less worthy beliefs; and the results are quite clear - and let me add, unfortunately practical.

As it took a while for the unsatisfactory beliefs to become materialized, so it may be a time before
you see physical results; but the new ideas will take growth and change your experience as
certainly as the old ones did. The process of imagining will also bring you face to face with other
subsidiary ideas that may momentarily bring you up short. You may see where you held two quite
conflicting ideas simultaneously, and with equal vigor. In such a case, you stalemated yourself.

This post was edited by 25centis on Apr 21 2020 03:54am

Broadcasting your altered position

When someone who has been ill starts on the road to recovery through changing his beliefs, he
may be quite surprised to find even his dearest allies suddenly upset, reminding him of the
"reality" of his dire state for the same reasons.

Because beliefs form reality - the structure of experience - any change in beliefs altering that
structure initiates change to some extent, of course. The status quo which served a certain
purpose is gone, new exercises are introduced, another creative process begins. Because your
private beliefs are shared with others, because there is interaction, then any determined change
of direction on your part is felt by others, and they will react in their own fashion.

You are setting out to experience the most fulfilled reality that you can. To do this you have,
hopefully, begun to examine your beliefs. You may want others to change. In doing so you begin
with yourself. I told you (in the 619th session) to imagine a game in which you see yourself acting
in line with the new desired belief. As you do so, see yourself affecting others in the new fashion.
See them reacting to you in the new way. This is highly important because telepathically you are
sending them interior messages. You are telling them that you are changing the conditions and
behavior of your relationship. You are broadcasting your altered position.

Some will be quite able to understand you at that level. There may be those who need the old
framework, and someone, if not you, to play the part you played before. Those people will either
drop out of your experience or you must drop them from yours.

Once more, if you think of daily life as an ever-moving three-dimensional painting with you as the
artist, then you will realize that as your beliefs change so will your experience. You must accept
the idea completely, however, that your beliefs form your experience. Discard those beliefs that
are not bringing you those effects you want. In the meantime you will often be in the position of
telling yourself that something is true in the face of physical data that seems completely
contradictory. You may say, "I live amid abundance and am free from want," while your eyes tell
you that the desk is piled with bills. You must realize that you are the one who produced that
"physical evidence" that still faces you, and you did so through your beliefs.

So as you alter the belief, the physical evidence will gradually begin to "prove" your new belief as
faithfully as it did your old one. You must work with your own ideas. While there are general
categories of beliefs, and general reasons for them, you must become personally aware of your
own, for no one person is completely like any other. The old beliefs served a purpose and fulfilled
a need.

As mentioned earlier you may have believed that of itself poverty was more spiritual than
abundance, or that you were basically unworthy and should therefore punish yourself by being
poor.

According to your energy, power and intensity, you can help change the beliefs of many people,
of course.
In your daily physical life you are usually concerned simply with changing your beliefs about
yourself, and then changing the beliefs others hold about you. You will find conflicting beliefs
within yourself and you must become aware of these. As an example, you may believe that you
want to understand the nature of your inner self - you may tell yourself you want to remember
your dreams, but at the same time still hold a belief in the basic unworthiness of the self, and be
quite frightened of remembering your dreams because of what you might find there.
It does no good in such a case to bemoan the situation and say, "I want to understand myself but
I'm frightened that I will not like what I find." You yourself must change your beliefs. You must
stop believing that the inner self is a dungeon of unsavory repressed emotion. It does contain
some repressed emotion. It also contains great intuition, knowledge, and the answers to all of
your questions.

Listen to your own conversation as you speak with friends, and to theirs. See how you reinforce
each other's beliefs. See how your imaginations often follow the same lines. All of this is quite out
in the open if you realize that it is.

Cellular memory playback

Try a simple experiment. The results will be self explanatory. Think of a sad event from your life.
Similar feelings will soon follow, and with them memories of other such unpleasant episodes
strung together through association. Scenes, odors, words, perhaps half-forgotten, will suddenly
come upon you with new freshness.

Your thoughts will activate the appropriate feelings. Beneath your awareness, however, they will
also trigger the cells' ever-present memory imprints of stimuli received when those events
occurred. There is, to some extent now, a cellular memory playback - and on the part of the entire
body, the recognition of its state at that time.

If you pursue such sorrowful thoughts persistently you are reactivating that body condition. Think
of one of the most pleasant events that ever happened to you and the reverse will be true, but the
process is the same. This time the associated memories are pleasant, and the body changes
accordingly.

Remember, these mental associations are living things. They are formations of energy
assembled into invisible structures, through processes quite as valid and complicated as the
organization of any group of cells. Comparing them with cells, they are of briefer duration,
generally speaking, though under certain conditions this does not apply. But your thoughts form
structures as real as the cells. Their composition is different in that no solidity is involved in your
terms.

As living cells have a structure, react to stimuli and organize according to their own classification,
so do thoughts. Thoughts thrive on association. They magnetically attract others like themselves,
and like some strange microscopic animals they repel their 'enemies,' or other thoughts that are
threatening to their own survival.

Using this analogy, your mental and emotional life forms a framework composed of such
structures, and these act directly upon the cells of your physical body.

Bárcsak más lenne a belief systemem

Change your beliefs about yourself

Use your conscious mind and its logic. If you discover that you feel unworthy, then do not simply
try to apply a more positive belief over that one. Instead discover the reasons for your first belief.
If you have not already done so, write down your feelings about yourself. Be perfectly honest.
What would you say if someone else came to you with the same reasons?

Examine what you have written. Realize that a set of beliefs is involved. There is a difference
between believing that you are unworthy and bring unworthy in fact.

Then write a list of your abilities and accomplishments. These should include such issues as
getting along well with others, being attractive, being good with plants or animals, being a good
carpenter or cook. Any talent of achievement should be noted as honestly as you recorded the
most minute 'defects' earlier.

There is no human being alive who does not have creative abilities in his or her own way,
achievements and excellent characteristics, so if you follow these instructions you will find out
that you are indeed a worthy individual.

When you catch yourself falling into a mood in which you feel inferior, look at your second list, of
abilities and accomplishments. Then use the positive suggestion in your own worth, backed up by
your own personal self-examination. You may say, 'But I know I have great abilities that I am not
using.

When I compare myself to others, then I fall far short. What difference does it make if I have a few
mundane achievements that are shared by many others, that are in no way unique? Surely my
destiny involves more than that. I have yearnings that I cannot express.

In the first place you must understand that in your own uniqueness it is futile to compare yourself
to others, for in so doing you try to emulate qualities that are theirs, and to that extent deny your
own miraculous being and vision. Once you begin comparing yourself to others there is no end to
it. You will always find someone more talented than you are in some way, and so will continue to
be dissatisfied. Instead, through working with your own beliefs, take it for granted that your life is
important; begin with it and where you are. Do not deride yourself because you have not reached
some great ideal, but start to use those talents that you have to the best of your ability, knowing
that in them lies your own individual fulfillment.

Any help that you give to others will come through the creative utilization of your own
characteristics and no one else's. Do not get upset with yourself when you find yourself dwelling
on negative issues in your life. Instead, constructively ask yourself why you are doing so. The
answer will come to you.

Use the knowledge as a bridge. Let whatever emotions are involved happen. If you do this
honestly, feelings of self-worthlessness or despondency will go through and vanish, changing of
their own accord. You may even find yourself impatient with the feelings themselves, or even
bored, and hence dismiss them. Do not tell yourself automatically that they are wrong, however,
and then try to apply a 'positive' belief like a band-aid.

Have a sense of humor about yourself - not a malicious one but a kindly humorous regard for
yourself. High seriousness is fine when it comes naturally and is not forced. But it can become
pompous if it is prolonged.

If you allow yourself to be more and more aware of your own beliefs, you can work with them. It is
silly to try to fight what you think of as negative beliefs, or to be frightened of them. They are not
mysterious. You may find that many served good purposes at one time, and that they have simply
been overemphasized. They may need to be restructured rather than denied.

Changing old beliefs and accepting new ones

In those areas in which you are dissatisfied, you feel that you are powerless, or that your will is
paralyzed, or that conditions continue despite what you think of as your intent. Yet if you pay
attention to your own quite conscious thoughts, you will find that you are concentrating upon
precisely those negative aspects that so appall you. You are hypnotizing yourself quite effectively
and so reinforcing the situation. You may say, horrified, 'What can I do? I am hypnotizing myself
into my overweight condition (or my loneliness, or my poor health).' Yet in other facets of your life
you may be hypnotizing yourself into wealth, accomplishment, satisfaction - and here you do not
complain. The same issues are involved. The same principles are operating. In those positive life
situations you are certain of your initiative. There is no doubt. Your beliefs become reality.

In the unsatisfactory aspects, you must understand this: there is also no doubt. You are utterly
convinced that you are sick, or poor, or lonely, or spiritually opaque, or unhappy.

The results, then, as easily and effortlessly follow. Natural hypnosis, in the terms given here,
operates as well in one case as in the other.

What should you do, then? First of all, you are the hypnotist. You must seize the initiative here as
you have in other positive aspects of your life. Whatever the superficial reasons for your beliefs,
you must say:

For a certain amount of time I will momentarily suspend what I believe in this area, and willfully
accept the belief I want. I will pretend that I am under hypnosis, with myself as hypnotist and
subject. For that time desire and belief will be one. There will be no conflict because I do this
willingly. For this period I will completely alter my old beliefs. Even though I sit quietly, in my mind
I will act as if the belief I want were mine completely.

At this point do not think of the future, but only of the present. If you are overweight, insert the
weight that you think is ideal for you while you are following this exercise. Imagine that you are
healthy if you have the belief that you are not. If you are lonely, believe that you are filled with the
feeling of companionship instead. Realize that you are exerting your initiative to imagine such
situations. Here there can be no comparison with your normal situation. Use visual data, or words
- whatever is most natural to you. And again, no more than ten minutes is required.

If you do this faithfully, within a month you will find the new conditions materializing in your
experience. Your neurological structure will respond automatically. The unconscious will be
aroused, bringing its great powers to bear, bringing you the new results. Do not try to overdo this,
to go through the entire day worrying about beliefs, for example. This can only cause you to
contrast what you have with what you want. Forget the exercise when it is completed. You will
find yourself with impulses that arrive in line with these newly inserted beliefs, and then it is up to
you to act on these and not ignore them.

The initiative must be yours. You will never know unless you try the exercise. Now if you are in
poor health, and have a physician, you had better continue going to him, because you still rely on
that system of belief - but use these exercises as supplements to build up your own sense of
inner health, and to protect you against any negative suggestions given by your doctor. Utilize the
belief in physicians since you have it.

Concentrate on your desire

To rid yourself of annoying restrictions then, my dear friend, you repattern your past from the
present. Whatever your circumstances, you use the past as a rich source, looking through it for
your successes, restructuring it. When you search it looking for what is wrong, then you become
blind to what was right, in those terms, so that the past only mirrors the shortcomings that now
face you.

Other events literally become invisible to you. Since basically past and future exist at once, you
are at the same time dangerously constructing your future along the same lines.
Individuals can go from psychologist to psychologist, from self-therapy to self-therapy, always
with the same question: 'What is wrong?' The question itself becomes a format through which
experience is seen, and itself represents one of the main reasons for all limitations, physical,
psychic or spiritual.

At one point or another the individual ceased concentrating upon what was right in certain
personal areas, and began to focus upon and magnify specific 'lacks.' With all good intentions,
then, various solutions are looked for, but all based upon the premise that something is wrong.
If such a practice is continued, the concentration upon negatives can gradually bleed out into
other previously unblemished areas of experience.

You are not at the mercy of past beliefs, therefore. On the other hand, the sooner you begin- to
act upon new ones the better. Otherwise you are not trusting them in the present. If you are poor
and want to have more money, and try to maintain a belief in abundance - while still faced with
the fact of present poverty - you must in your reality make some symbolic move that shows you
are willing to accept a change.

As foolish as it may sound, you should give some money away, or in whatever manner that suits
you act as if you did have more money than you physically have. You must respond to your new
beliefs, so that neurologically the new message gets across.

You perform habitually in certain manners as a result of your beliefs. Now if you willfully change
some of those habits then you are also getting the message across. The initiative must come
from you, and in the present. In a very real manner of speaking, this means changing your
viewpoint, that particular perspective with which you view your past and present and imagine your
future.

You must look within yourself for evidences of what you want in terms of positive experience.
Examine your past with that in mind. Imagine your future from the power point of the present. In
such a way at least you are not using the past to reinforce your limitations, or projecting them into
the future. It is only natural to contrast what you want with what you have, and it is very easy to
become discouraged in so doing, but looking for errors in the past will not help you. A correctly
utilized five-minute period of time can be of great benefit, however. In this period concentrate
upon the fact that the point of power is now. Feel and dwell upon the certainty that your
emotional, spiritual and psychic abilities are focused through the flesh, and for five minutes only
direct all of your attention toward what you want. Use visualization or verbal thought - whatever
comes most naturally to you; but for that period do not concentrate upon any lacks, just upon your
desire.

Use all of your energy and attention. Then forget about it. Do not check to see how well it is
working. Simply make sure that in that period your intentions are clear. Then in one way or
another, according to your own individual situation, make one physical gesture or act that is in
line with your belief or desire. Behave physically, then, at least once a day in a way that shows
that you have faith in what you are doing. The act can be a very simple one. If you are lonely and
feel unwanted, it can merely involve your smiling at someone else. If you are poor, it can involve
such a simple thing as buying an item you want that costs two cents more than the one you would
usually buy - acting on the faith, even that feebly, that the two cents will somehow be given you or
come into your experience; but acting as if you had more than you do.

In health terms, it involves conducting yourself once a day as though you were not sick in
whatever way given you. But the belief in the present, reinforced for five minutes, plus such a
physical action, will sometimes bring literally awesome results. Such effects will occur however
only if you cease looking into the past 'for what is wrong,' and stop reinforcing your negative
experience. These same principles can be used in any area of your life, and in each you are
choosing from a variety of probable events.

Seth later summarizes this exercise in 'Dreams, Evolution and Value Fulfillment':
The important lessons have never really appeared in your societies: the most beneficial use of
the directed will, with great expectations, and that coupled with the knowledge of Framework 1
and 2 activities. Very simply: You want something, you dwell upon it consciously for a while, you
consciously imagine it coming to the forefront of probabilities, closer to your actuality. Then you
drop it like a pebble into Framework 2, forget about it as much as possible for a fortnight, and do
this in a certain rhythm.

Discover your conscious beliefs part 1

It is true that habitual thoughts of love, optimism and self acceptance are better for you than their
opposites; but again, your beliefs about yourself will automatically attract thoughts that are
consistent with your ideas. There is as much natural aggressiveness in love as there is in hate.
Hate is a distortion of such a normal force, the result of your beliefs.

As in the material that Ruburt received ahead of time for his own use, natural aggression is
cleansing and highly creative - the thrust behind all emotions.

There are two ways to get at your own conscious beliefs. The most direct is to have a series of
talks with yourself. Write down your beliefs in a variety of areas, and you will find that you believe
different things at different times. Often there will be contradictions readily apparent. These
represent opposing beliefs that regulate your emotions, your bodily condition and your physical
experience. Examine the conflicts. Invisible beliefs will appear that unite those seemingly diverse
attitudes. Invisible beliefs are simply those of which you are fully aware but prefer to ignore,
because they represent areas of strife which you have not been willing to handle thus far. They
are quite available once you are determined to examine the complete contents of your conscious
mind.

If this strikes you as too intellectual a method, then you can also work backward from your
emotions to your beliefs. In any case, regardless of which method you choose, one will lead you
to the other. Both approaches require honesty with yourself, and a firm encounter with the mental,
psychic and emotional aspects of your current reality.

As with Andrea, you must accept the validity of your feelings while realizing that they are about
certain issues or conditions, and are not necessarily factual statements of your reality. 'I feel that I
am a poor mother,' or, 'I feel that I am a failure.' These are emotional statements and should be
accepted as such. You are to understand, however, that while the feelings have their own
integrity as emotions, they may not be statements of fact. You might be an excellent mother while
feeling that you are very inadequate. You may be most successful in reaching your goals while
still thinking yourself a failure.

By recognizing these differences and honestly following the feelings through - in other words, by
riding the emotions - you will be led to the beliefs behind them. A series of self-revelations will
inevitably result, each leading you to further creative psychological activity. At each stage you will
be closer to the reality of your experience than you have ever been.

The conscious mind will benefit greatly as it becomes more and more aware of its directing
influence upon events. It will no longer fear the emotions, or the body, as threatening or
unpredictable, but sense the greater unity in which it is involved.

The emotions will not feel like stepchildren, with only the best dressed being admitted. They will
not need to cry out for expression, for they will be fully admitted as members of the family of the
self. Now, again, some of you will say that your trouble is that you are too emotional, too
sensitive. You may believe that you are too easily swayed. In such cases you are afraid of your
emotions. You think their powers so strong that all reason can be drowned within them.

No matter how open it may seem that you are, you will nevertheless accept certain emotions that
you think of as safe, and ignore others, or stop them at particular points, because you are afraid
of following them further. This behavior will follow your beliefs, of course. If you are over forty, for
instance, you may tell yourself that age is meaningless, that you enjoy much younger people, that
you think young thoughts. You will accept only those emotions that appear to be in keeping with
your ideas of youth. You become concerned with the problems of the young. You accept what
you think of as optimistic health giving thoughts.

Discover your conscious beliefs part 2

Give us a moment. Since your conscious beliefs determine those unconscious functions that
bring about your personal experience, your first step is to enlarge those beliefs.

The concepts given in this book should have already helped you do that to some extent. Within
your own subjective reality are traces of all those roads not taken, those abilities not used. You
may think of yourself as primarily a parent, or mainly in terms of your job or profession. As much
as possible, for now, forget the normal familiar light in which you see yourself, and consider your
identity.

Write down or enumerate all of your known physical and mental abilities, whether they have been
developed or not, and all of those inclinations toward particular activities - even those only
remotely considered - as well as those that have come at all vividly to mind.

These represent the varied probable characteristics from which you have chosen to activate your
particular main interest. Out of these attributes, therefore, you chose what you now consider to be
your hard-bed reality.

Any of those directions, followed, can enrich the existence that you know, and in turn open up
other probabilities that now escape you. The main image of yourself that you have held has, to a
large extent, also closed your mind to these other probable interests and identifications. If you
think in terms of a multidimensional self, then you win realize that you have many more avenues
open to expression and fulfillment than you have been using. These probable achievements will
lie latent unless you consciously decide to bring them into being.

Whatever talents you sense you have can be developed only if you determine to do so. The
simple act of decision will then activate the unconscious mechanisms. You, as a personality,
regardless of your health, wealth or circumstances, have a rich variety of probable experience
from which to choose. Consciously you must realize this and seize the direction for your own life.
Even if you say, 'I will go along with all life offers, ' you are making a conscious decision. If you
say, 'I am powerless to direct my life,' you are also making a deliberate choice - and in that case a
limiting one.

The path of experience is nowhere settled. There is no one road that does not have avenues to
another. There are deep veins of probable actions ever available to you at any given time. Your
imagination can be of great value, allowing you to open yourself to such courses; you can then
use it to help you bring these into being.

If you are poor, you chose that reality from many probable ones that did not involve poverty - and
that are still open. If you chose illness, again there is a probable reality ready for initiation in which
you choose health. If you are lonely there are probable friends you refused to meet in the past,
but who are readily available.

In your mind, therefore, see those probable abilities or events taking place. As you do, the
intensity of your desire brings them into your experience. There are no boundaries, again, set
about the self. There are literally many other probable yous. You can draw upon their abilities, as
in their own way they call upon your own, for you are all intimately connected.

Discovering Your Point of Power

You can change the picture of your life at any time if only you realize that it is simply the one
portrait of yourself that you have created from an unlimited amount of probable ones. The
peculiar aspect of your own probable portraits will still be characteristic of you, and no other.

The abilities, strengths and variants that you may want to actualize are already latent, in your
terms, and at your disposal. Suppose that you are unhealthy and desire health. If you understand
the nature of probabilities, you will not need to pretend to ignore your present situation. You will
recognize it instead as a probable reality that you have physically materialized. Taking that for
granted, you will then begin the process necessary to bring a different probability into physical
experience.

You will do this by concentrating upon what you want, but feeling no conflict between that and
what you have, because one will not contradict the other; each will be seen as a reflection of
belief in daily life. As it took some time to build up your present image with its unhealthy aspects,
so it may take time to change that picture. But concentration upon the present unhealthy situation
will only prolong it. Period.

Each condition is as real or unreal as the other. Which you? Which world? You have your choice,
broadly, within certain frameworks that you have chosen as a part of your creaturehood. The past
as you think of it, and the subconscious, again as you think of it, have little to do with your present
experience outside of your beliefs about them. The past contains for each of you some moments
of joy, strength, creativity and splendor, as well as episodes of unhappiness, despair perhaps,
turmoil and cruelty. Your present convictions will act like a magnet, activating all such past issues,
happy or sad. You will choose from your previous experience all of those events that reinforce
your conscious beliefs, and so ignore those that do not; the latter may even seem to be
nonexistent.

As mentioned in this book (in Chapter Four, for instance), the emerging memories will then turn
on the body mechanisms, merging past and present in some kind of harmonious picture. This
means that the pieces will fit together whether they are joyful or not.

This joining of the past and present, in that context, predisposes you to similar future events, for
you have geared yourself for them. Change now quite practically alters both the past and the
future. For you, because of your neurological organization, the present is obviously the only point
from which past and future can be changed, or when action becomes effected.

I am not speaking symbolically. In the most intimate of terms, your past and future are modified
by your present reactions. Alterations occur within the body. Circuits within the nervous system
are changed, and energies that you do not understand seek out new connections on much
deeper levels far beyond consciousness. Your present beliefs govern the actualization of events.
Creativity and experience are being formed moment by moment by each individual.

You must understand that your present is the point at which flesh and matter meet with the spirit.
Therefore the present is your point of power in your current lifetime, as you think of it. If you
assign greater force to the past, then you will feel ineffective and deny yourself your own energy.
For an exercise, sit with your eyes wide open, looking about you, and realize that this moment
represents the point of your power, through which you can affect both past and future events.
The present seen before you, with its intimate physical experience, is the result of action in other
such presents. Do not be intimidated therefore by the past or the future. There is no need at all
for undesirable aspects of your contemporary reality to be projected into the future, unless you
use the power of the present to do so.

If you learn to get hold of this feeling of power now, you can use it most effectively to alter your
life situation in whatever way you choose - again, within those limitations set by your creature
hood. If you were born without a limb, for example, your power in the present cannot
automatically regenerate it in this life, although in other systems of reality you do possess that
limb.

This post was edited by 25centis on Apr 21 2020 04:23am