The Nature Of Perception (7)

Seth Early Sessions, Vol 9, Session 472

The Nature Of Perception (7)

Now.  You condition your body to behave in general overall patterns.  You condition it to react in certain ways.  It mimics perfectly your psychic and mental reactions.

Concentration in any given area predisposes certain elements within the nervous system toward that particular kind of focus or concentration, as many footfalls hollow out a pathway.  Now this is somewhat understood in your scientific circles.

What is not understood is that the same sort of conditioning also operates, not only in the reaction to events but in the formation of events.  You predispose yourselves toward the construction of events of a particular nature, to which of course you then react.

You also help maintain and form constructions or events of others that fit in with your own particular varieties of interests.  Now again I am not speaking symbolically.  Very definite portions of the nervous system that you do not understand are the receptors of impulses that go outward from you to form events.

There are of course mass constructions, psychic pools whose energy is derived from many individuals, all predisposed because of their own inclinations toward specific areas of activity.  Various groups of individuals therefore, massed together, help form and maintain particular areas of your reality.

This sort of behavior continues of course whether you are waking or sleeping, and is highly involved in the construction of dream images and constructions.  There are areas of activity to which you do not react simply because you have not activated sympathetic pathways within yourself.  These require much more effort on your part, but even the physical brain has latent within it the possibilities for many kinds of activities that still remain generally unknown.

The inner self therefore uses the physical system to express its own inclinations and ideas of reality.  It is the inner self that unfolds those patterns of behavior spoken about in the article you read on infant growth. (In a recent issue of Time magazine.)  Such unfoldings always occur from within, responding to signals not from the exterior but from the interior environment.

The interior self causes the physical challenges that then seem to spurt further bodily activity.  The impetus for any developing and latent action is incipient in the unborn infant.  The child’s first steps are latent within the first flickering of the infant’s eyes, for the events follow as naturally as the opening of the petals of a flower.

These are unfoldings, as the inner self materializes what is already latent into physical actuality.  Now there may be areas in which the inner self is simply less proficient.  The inner self is a developing entity, not a finished product.  The whole idea of physical reality, individually speaking, is the emergence of experience within your particular system.

The inner self is acquainting itself with reality as it exists there.  In many cases it is emerging into a new world.  Since the learning process is involved, there are errors.  Any faulty constructions however are used by the inner self in a feedback system and as a part of the learning process.  Your system is not the most elementary, but it is one of the most elementary, and it is a way that the inner self acquaints itself with certain basic facts.

It therefore provides itself with a large variety of environments in various reincarnations, with problems of various natures, and with diverse circumstances.  It does not try to form life conditions that offer no challenges, quite the reverse in fact.  It is getting used to its own abilities and learning how to use them.  What happens in the case of willfully used destructive energies?  It finds out by using them.

It knows full well its own indestructibility, and that of its fellows.  What happens in the case of constructive psychic energy when it is purposely denied aggressive outlets?  It finds out.  What does it feel like to be the brunt of aggression?  It forms another life situation and discovers the answer.  How strong and potent is the energy that is at its command?  How can it best be used?  It is quite necessary that all of these questions be answered, for the inner self is composed of energy, and in other fields of activity thoughts and emotions are instantaneously translated, their results instantly seen.  There is no saving time lag, as within your own system, and there is no physical body such as you know it.

There is form.  The very mechanism of the body however is so constructed that it can bear the brunt of many errors, and free itself from them, though this may not seem to be the case at times.  Nevertheless yours is a slow-motion world in many ways as far as your perceptions are concerned, while you are within it.  Your body is much like a sculptor or a sculpt, never really completed, the inner self trying out various techniques of creativity on its first test piece.  The results are not always of the best, but the sculptor is independent of his product and knows there will be others.

The inner self then has an entirely different perspective upon your reality than you do, and it sees purposes which are not apparent to you.

Do not forget however that you are a portion of the inner self.  It is not using you.  You are the portion of it that experiences physical reality.  Now physical illnesses that are not critical but observable, that do not involve the loss of say of a limb or of an organ, generally represent problems that are in the process of being solved, problems that are “out in the open”.

Now these particular kinds of illnesses are the end product of a process of discovery.  Inner problems are literally brought out into the open when they can be faced, recognized, dealt with and conquered, using the symptoms as measuring points of progress.  A trial-and-error system is involved; but inner processes are reflected rather quickly in these cases upon the physical condition.

Now ideally the means have been given, with the problem out in the open, for correct solution.  A healing process is definitely involved, even with the initial emergence of the symptoms, for the psychological system finally forces the problem out into the open.  I am speaking now of the kind of illnesses I have described.

In other cases where the symptom is interior itself, as in ulcers, this is a sign that the inner self has not yet come to such a point.  The personality is not yet willing to face the problems even to that extent and the symptom itself is shielded from physical sight, quite rightly symbolically speaking.  The relative observability of a symptom is a clue therefore as to the personality’s attitude toward its problem.

Now this material has important psychological implications that I will follow up, and it is also connected with our material on perception.

Now there are other layers.  Many problems are never materialized as physical symptoms.  They remain as blank spots, uncultivated and unproductive areas within the psyche – areas in which there are no problems because there is no experience permitted.  Curiously vacant areas in which very little perception is allowed.  A lack of development, lacking any challenge or possibility for fulfillment.

There is then a mental, psychic, or emotional lack of sight.  An idiocy of a kind, and a complete blockage, a denial of experience along certain lines that is far more detrimental than a specific problem, for there is an inability of the personality to express itself to any effective degree in that area.

There are also problems within the psyche and in the emotional context that are not understood by the individual, or that he is frightened of or that he will not face.  Now any of these distort his ability to perceive and to create.  They limit his effective are of psychic and creative activity

Now this was Ruburt’s state before the emergence of the symptoms.  The explosive first emergence represented the first forceful emergence of the problem into physical terms, but as such was actually productive and of a healing nature – much more beneficial, say, than if such emergence had not occurred.

Old negative patterns of thought, always present beneath an exterior optimism, had gone unrecognized by him, and were like a thorn in his side.  Until these emerged physically he was not aware of them sufficiently enough to handle them effectively.  They distorted his reality and his perceptions without his being aware of them.

I am going into this rather deeply because while we are dealing with perceptions we will also be discussing distortions, because the information will help Ruburt, and because personal examples serve well for your understanding.

When he is finished you see he will understand something extremely important for him, and experience a corresponding relief.  For seeing that he creates his own reality now, he will understand that he also helped form the environment in which he grew, and that his mother was not entirely responsible.

The despondencies that he encounters also should show him that these feelings emerge into his conscious awareness now, to be dealt with, where in the past they festered beneath consciousness, and he would not admit them as a problem for he was not that aware of their existence.

They are negative feelings, deliberately exaggerated so that he can understand their nature and handle them as such.  Your therapy was highly successful.  I refer to your shopping endeavor (on Saturday March 29) and the therapy of delight in small things, and laughter.

…  Now the information given earlier this evening, along with other material, will someday provide an effective measuring stick by which individuals can understand the nature of their difficulties, and is therefore quite important.

In many situations one individual within a family will serve as the family symptom.

In such a case the difficulties are not being faced by others, but only projected by them upon another.  In many cases the other is a younger individual who is more resilient, has more energy, a more instinctive use of their life force, who is better able to bear the problems for the whole unit, and who will actually escape from them.  Sometimes he can solve the problem.  Often when he leaves the problem simply falls back where it belonged originally – upon the shoulders of the parents.  It is for this reason often that parents have difficulties when the children leave.