“As Seth suggests, through even a five-minute exercise, in which we sit quietly and look about, we can become aware that the present is the point of power. In his exercise, we gently remind ourselves that we aren’t at the mercy of our past beliefs unless we think we are. We have the full freedom to insert new creative goals in our point-of-power exercises. Next, we relax, to give our fresh suggestions time to begin working within us. Next, physically we make a simple gesture or act, no matter how modest, that is in line with our desires for the future. Periodically we repeat the exercise — but easily, without pressure, confident that we’re doing well. Action is thought in physical motion, Seth tells us. … in “The Nature of Personal Reality”, Seth deals extensively with the point of power, its exercises and meanings and benefits. See especially sessions 656-57 in Chapter 15.”
(The Magical Approach: Seth Speaks About The Art Of Creative Living, Session Five)
Session 656
What you must understand is this: Each of the events in each of your lives was “once” probable. From a given field of action, then, you choose those happenings that will be physically materialized.
This operates in individual and mass terms. Suppose that today your home was robbed. Yesterday, the theft was one of innumerable probable events. I chose such an example because more than one person would have to be involved – the victim and the robber. Why was your home ransacked, and not your neighbor’s? In one way or another, through your conscious thought you attracted such an event, and drew it from probability into actuality. The occurrence would be an accumulation of energy – turned into action – and be brought about by corollary beliefs.
You may be convinced that human nature is evil, or that no one is safe from another’s aggression, or that people are motivated mainly by greed. Such beliefs attract their own reality. If you have anything worth losing, you are then automatically convinced that someone else will take it from you, or try their hardest to do so. In your own way you send out messages to just such a person. On basic levels your convictions will be quite similar, but one will see himself as the victim and one as the aggressor – that is, each of you will react differently to the same set of beliefs. However the two of you are necessary if a crime of that nature is, or is to be, committed.
The beliefs of both of you find justification in physical life, and only reinforce themselves. The fear of robbers attracts robbers. If you think that men are evil, however, you are often not able to examine that as a belief, but take it as a condition of reality.
All of your present experience was drawn from probable reality. During our life, any event must come through your creaturehood, with the built-in time recognition that is so largely a part of your neurological structure; so usually there is a lag, a lapse in time, during which your beliefs cause material actualization. When you try to change your conviction in order to change your experience, you also have to first stop the momentum that you have already built up, so to speak. You are changing the messages while the body is used to reacting smoothly, unquestioningly, to a certain set of beliefs.
There is a steady even flow in which conscious activity through the neurological structure brings about events, and a familiar pattern of reaction is established. When you alter these conscious beliefs through effort, then a period of time is necessary while the structure learns to adjust to the new preferred situation. If beliefs are changed overnight, comparatively less time is required.
In a manner of speaking, each belief can be seen as a powerful station, pulling to it from fields of probabilities only those signals to which it is attuned, and blocking out all others. When you set up a new station there may be some static or bleed-through from an old one for a while.
Any ability you have, then, can be “brought in more clearly”, amplified, and become practical rather than probable. But is such a case you must concentrate upon the attribute – not, for example, upon the fact that you have not used it well thus far.
An artist produces a body of work in his lifetime. Each painting is but one materialization, one focused presentation, of an endless variety of probable paintings. The actual work involved in the selection of data is still made according to the beliefs in the artist’s conscious mind as to who he is, how good an artist he is, what kind of artist he is, what “school” of artistic beliefs he subscribes to, his ideas of society and his place in it, and esthetic and economic values, to name but a few.
The same sort of thing operates in the actualization of any event in which you are involved. You create your life, then. Inner images are of great importance to the artist. He tries to project them upon his canvas or board. Again, you are each your own artist, and your inner visualizations become models for other situations and events. The artist utilizes training and mixes his colors in order to give artistic flesh to his paintings. The images in your mind draw to themselves all the proper emotional energy and power needed to fill them out as physical events.
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 the 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.
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 the 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, our 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 connection 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 creaturehood. 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. (See Seth’s Preface, as well as the 615th session in Chapter Two.)
Exterior conditions can always be changed if you understand the principles of which I am speaking. Diseases can be eliminated, even those that seem fatal – but only if the beliefs behind them are erased or altered enough so that their specific focusing effect upon the body is sufficiently released. The present as you think of it, and in practical working terms, is that point at which you select your physical experience from all those events that could be materialized. Your physical circumstances change automatically as your beliefs do. As your knowledge grows, so your experience becomes more fulfilling. This does not necessarily mean that it evens out in any way, or that there are not peaks and valleys. Each aspiration presupposes the admission of a lack, each challenge presupposes a barrier to be overcome. The more adventurous will often choose greater challenges, and so in their minds the contrasts between what they want to achieve and their present status can seem to be impossible.
In each case, however, the point of power is the present, and from that moment you choose which you, and which world. The experience of a country is the cumulative result of the choice of each individual in it, so as you choose your circumstances you affect each other person within your country and your world.
In many “native” cultures an individual is not considered in terms of his age at all, and the numbering of years is regarded as insignificant. In fact, a man may not know his age as you think of it. It would do you all good – young, middle-aged and old alike – to forget the number of your years, because in your culture so many beliefs are limiting in those ways. Youth is denied its wisdom and old age is denied its joy.
To pretend to ignore your age, to act young because you fear your age, is no answer. (See the 644th session in Chapter Eleven.) In your terms your point of reality and power is, once more, in your current experience. A realization of this would allow you at any age to draw upon qualities and knowledge that “existed” in your past or “will exist” in your future. Your ages are probable [simultaneous].
Although time does not basically exist as you “know” it, you are neurologically forced to perceive your life as a series of passing moments. As creatures you are born young and grow older. Yet the animals, as creatures, are not as limited in their experience in that regard. They have no beliefs in old age that automatically shut down their abilities; so left alone, while the do physically die as all creatures must in those terms, they do not deteriorate in the same way.
You do not understand the communications between your selves and pets, for example, where in their own way they interpret and react to your beliefs. They mirror your ideas, then, and so become vulnerable as they would not be in their natural circumstances. In greater terms their relationship with you is natural, of course, but their innate realization that the creature’s point of power is in the present is to some degree undermined by their own receptivity and translation of your beliefs. A young kitten is treated differently than an older one. The cat responds to such conditioning, In the same way your own conclusions about age become fact in your experience. In line with them, if you could convince yourself that you were ten years younger, or ten years older, then it would be faithfully reflected in your personal environment.
If you were twenty, you would be able to draw upon the wisdom you imagine you would have at thirty.
If you were sixty, you would be able to use the physical strength you imagined was denied you now, but available then. All of this would be physically and biologically expressed within your body as well.
Which you? Which world? If you are lonely it is because you believe in your loneliness in this present point that you acknowledge as time. From what seems to be the past you draw only those memories that reinforce your condition, and you project those into the future. Physically, you are overwhelming your body as it responds to a state of loneliness through chemical and hormonal reactions. You are also denying your own point of action within the present.
Vitamins, better food, medical attention, may temporarily rejuvenate the body, but unless you change your beliefs it will quickly become swamped again by your feelings of depression. In such a case you must realize that you make your own loneliness, and resolve to change through both thought and action. Action is thought in physical motion, outwardly perceived.
Session 657
THE PRESENT IS THE POINT OF POWER
The above is one of the most important sentences in this book in practical terms, and working within the framework of time as you understand it. As mentioned earlier (in the 653rd session in Chapter Fourteen), you actualize events from the present intersection of spirit and flesh, choosing them from probabilities according to your beliefs.
All of your physical, mental and spiritual abilities are focused together, then, in the brilliant concentration of “present” experience. You are not at the mercy of the past, or of previous convictions, unless you believe that you are. If you fully comprehend your power in the present, you will realize that action at that point also alters the past, its beliefs and reactions.
In other words I am telling you that your present beliefs, in a manner of speaking, are like the directions given to the entire personality, simultaneously organizing and reorganizing past experience according to you current concepts of reality.
The future – the probable future – is being altered in the same way, of course. To look backward for the source of current problems can lead you into the habit of seeking only negative episodes from your past, and prevent you from experiencing it as a source of pleasure, accomplishment, or success.
You are structuring your earlier life through the dissatisfactions of the present, and therefore reinforcing your problems.
It is as if you were reading a history book that was devoted only to failures, cruelties and errors of the race, ignoring all of its accomplishments. Such practices can lead you to use your own “history” so that it gives a very distorted picture of who and what you are – a picture that then paints your present circumstances.
Those given to such practices – constant examination of the past in order to discover what is wrong in the present – too often miss the point. Instead, they constantly reinforce the negative experience from which they are trying to escape. Their initial problems were caused precisely as a result of the same kind of thinking. A great many unsatisfactory conditions result because individuals become frightened at various periods in their lives, doubt themselves, and begin to concentrate upon “negative” aspects.
The situation may be quite different in some ways. Large areas of life may not be touched by certain attitudes, while others are. One person may be completely free physically and in excellent health, and yet, because of certain experiences, begin to doubt his ability to get along with others. So he may begin to look into his past – with that belief in mind, that he cannot relate – and then find within previous conduct all kinds of reasons to support the idea.
If he journeyed through his memories trying to find a different kind of proof instead, then in that same past he would discover instances when he did relate well with others. Your present beliefs structure the memories which will parade before you now – and what you remember will then seem to justify the beliefs.
When you are trying to alter your beliefs, look through your past with the new conceptions in mind. If you are ill, remember when you were not. Search your life for proofs of your health. Your very life itself is hard evidence that health is within you!
In almost all cases of present limitation, there is one main theme in that particular area: The individual has schooled himself or herself to stress “negative” aspects, for whatever reasons.
I have frequently said that beliefs cause reality, and that no symptom will simply fade away unless the “reason” is ascertained – but such reasons go far beneath your current ideas of cause and effect. They involve intimate philosophical value judgments on the part of each individual. Beneath them, the apparent causes of limitations in personal life, there are other far-reaching beliefs, and each individual will use those elements in his private experience to back these up. This applies to any kind of lack or hindrance severe enough to be a problem.
You have been taught that you are at the mercy of previous events, so your idea of looking for the source of personal difficulty is to examine the past, but – to find what you did wrong there, or what mistakes occurred there, or what interpretations were made there! Again, regardless of what you have been taught, the point of power is in the present; and again, your present beliefs will be used to structure your recollections.
Those memories will be used to reach any conclusion, as statistics can be used, for example. Along the way you may settle for a given remembered event or two, and assign to them the reasons for your present behavior. If so, you are already prepared to change your current beliefs and mode of action, and simply use the occurrences or habits of the past as a stimulus or motivation. (See the 616th session in Chapter Two.)
The question, “What is wrong with me?” will only lead you to create further limitations, and to reinforce those that you do have, through exaggerating such activities in the present and projecting them into the future.
Which you? Which world? These questions are to be answered in the “now”, as you understand it, through the realization that your power of action is in the present and not in the past. Your only effective point of changing any aspect of your world lies in that miraculous instant connection of spirit and self through neurological impact.
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. (See the 624th session in Chapter Five.)
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 tray 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 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.
Those of you who believe in reincarnation in more or less conventional terms, can make the error of using or blaming “past” lives, organizing them through your current beliefs. It is bad enough to believe that you are at the mercy of one past, but to consider yourself helpless before innumerable previous errors from other lives puts you in an impossible situation; the conscious will is robbed of its power to act. Such lives exist simultaneously. They are other expressions of yourself, interacting, but with each conscious self possessing the point of power in its own present.
It is for this reason that “past-life information” is so often used to reinforce current social situations – because, like the past in this life, such memories are constructed through present belief.
If such information is given to you by another, by a psychic, for example, that individual is also very apt to pick up those “lives” that make sense to you now, and – unconsciously of course – to structure them precisely along the lines of your beliefs. This may not seem obvious. If an individual believes that he is basically unworthy he will recall, or be given, those lives that justify that idea. If he thinks he must pay for his sins now, then that belief will attract memory of those lives that will reinforce it; this will be highly organized recall, leaving out everything that does not apply.
If an individual believes that he is being taken advantage of, and is caught in a mundane existence, unappreciated, then he may receive from himself or others information showing that in other lives he was greatly honored – thereby reinforcing his belief that now he is taken for granted, or worse.
These statements of mine are general, for each individual will have his or her own way of reinforcing beliefs. If you think you are ill, most likely past-life information will show that you committed crimes for which you are now doing penance. In whatever framework you choose, you will always find proper reinforcement for your belief.
The truth as far as it can be stated is this: YOU FORM YOUR REALITY NOW, through the intersection of soul in flesh, and in your terms the present is your point of power.
Each of your reincarnational selves are born as a creature in flesh, like you. Each one has its own “points of power”, or successive moments in which it also materializes daily existence in a linear manner from all the probabilities available to it.
In a way that will be explained in another book for those interested in such matters, there is a kind of coincidence with all of these present points of power that exists between you and your “reincarnational” selves. There are even biological connections in terms of cellular “memory”. (See the 653rd session in Chapter Thirteen.) So through your current beliefs you can, in your own space and time, attract tendencies toward certain experiences shared by these others. There is a constant interaction in this multidimensional point of power, therefore, so that in your terms one incarnated self draws from all of the others what abilities it wants, according to its own specific, localized beliefs.
These selves are different counterparts of yourself in creaturehood, experiencing bodily reality; but at the same time your organism itself shuts out the simultaneous nature of experience. This does not mean that at other levels you cannot perceive it, but that generally speaking events must seem to appear in a series
In quite real personal and racial terms, the past is still happening. You create it from your present according to your beliefs. A removed appendix will not reappear physically. There are certain frameworks that are accepted, built into your creaturehood. There is far greater freedom, however, even on the cellular level.
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