Where is the line drawn between manifestations of belief and accepted root assumptions?

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Continuing the discussion from Did Seth suggest that Jane quit smoking, and why?:

I can’t tell you how many times I’ve wondered this. In fact I’d say it’s one of the great things I still don’t understand about reality creation. Where precisely the line exists between, “this is a rule of the physical plane, and you created your reality by joining this plane and thus living by this rule” and “this is not a rule but purely a manifestation of your beliefs”. It seems clear that there are things which fall into the former category, e.g. that we have 4 limbs. Would a belief that radiation isn’t a thing make us immune to radiation, or simply cause us to avoid it? I know certainly that unconscious avoidance is a relevant form of reality creation. After all, “I live in a safe universe” and so I do. Something may supposedly “exist” but it does not exist in my experience and thus it may as well not exist.

I dropped my body fat from ~16% (“average”) to 11% (“lean”), my waist from 32" my entire adult life (approaching 34") now down to 30". It was 100% Seth exercises that put me on the path, but what those exercises ended up doing was leading me to a very particular … thing. Upon studying that thing I realized it was the most agreeable scientifically sound thing I had ever read about weight that explained absolutely every puzzle. So of course I believed in it. It was like discovering the Seth material all over again explaining reality but this time for explaining weight loss. Now I can’t help but wonder, is this a “true” discovery, aspect of our plane, or is it entirely hypnotic? So far I lean toward it being a “true” discovery, at least as “true” as other common medical knowledge (it concerns the effects of insulin on fat storage). After all, it seems many of the systems and chemicals we are aware of do indeed do the things we think they do, adrenaline for instance, which as I recall Seth backs up. Generally where we are mistaken is in the more exotic aspects, like the mental source of these physical/chemical triggers, and others unseen.

For instance I’d say viruses indeed have some of the qualities Science believes them to have, but where they are wrong is in regard to the cause, as the cause is always mental - the virus is not the cause but the effect, or medium of the effect. And as we know (and Science doesn’t) alleged “bad” viruses transform into alleged “good” viruses. So there was additional information here from Seth, but some of these behaviors are nevertheless true of our physical plane although of course belief has a great impact upon them.

So I can’t help but wonder, might not this role of insulin be a legitimate force, a medium, a true thing, and our beliefs would then be the cause that affects our insulin response to sugar? So just as it is not accurate to say, “a virus causes a cold”, I do not mean to say, “insulin resistance causes fat storage”, but rather that I mean to say, “beliefs can cause a virus to cause a cold (or do something helpful)” and “beliefs can cause unfavorable insulin response that stores fat”. Does this not follow logically? When I have attempted to bring up my discovery in this area in the past and recommend reading Why We Get Fat by Gary Taubes I am met with, “well no, this isn’t legitimate, it’s beliefs that are legitimate”, but I never meant to refute that. Beliefs are and always will be the prime movers, but perhaps Taubes’s work can still be very accurate, and is showing the pathways through which a belief change would indeed alter the body.

But just as there is therapy, including natural therapy, for a physical ailment while the beliefs are worked on beneath, isn’t it fair and possible to make a physical action, such as lowering sugar intake, while also working on those beleifs, and thus accelerate the body’s weight loss quite drastically? I don’t mean to say that a belief change about weight gain wouldn’t cause the appropriate body response on its own (which very well may be the regaining of insulin sensitivity) but as human beings we can grow impatient. And isn’t it fair to say that the changing of a belief not only causes an internal change but also suggests changes in behavior to accelerate the process, just as an animal seeks medicinal herbs [NoPR]? And I by no means suggest the outright demonization of carbohydrates (and Gary Taubes truly doesn’t either), or that such behavioral change be permanent (rather it’s simply to correct an imbalance) but the science seems very useful and practical and beyond the scope of a fad diet - and it seems it can be of significant benefit and still harmonious with Seth’s teachings. Am I wrong? I want to see other Sethies take up this experiment. Even if it is an entirely hypnotic effect to lose weight it’s still the most constructive one I’ve seen, and though there may be many ways up the mountain, why not try this recently blazed easier path? Belief is a tool, and as you may recall Seth saying in regard to doctors, “use the belief since you possess it”, there is no shame in not being able to 100% will a new belief upon ourselves, and no strict requirement to do so.

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Seth noted that you would freeze to death is left in extreme cold, that that is because there is a root belief in play–that we all agree to.

Seth suggests taking in as pure food and water as one can, as this makes projections of consciousness easier.

There are many aspects of reality we must comply with, here. When using physical elements or ingesting them, it is best to have the healthiest beliefs about such. But beliefs don’t erase the existence and effect, say, of a carbohydrate molecule although they will dictate how our body uses them and even how much or not will be assimilated.

A tribe who salvaged a machine, once, loved the bluish metal in its core and made jewelry of it, dying off from the radioactive particles decaying off it. We live in a physical reality and particles interact–just as Seth noted LSD can destroy the ego structure by tampering at this level.

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I’m more grateful for this response than you realize! Do you remember which particular books he said some of these things? Although it definitely sounds correct. I know the LSD information is in NoPR.

I think I recall the recommendation for pure food and water for both projections of consciousness and health, yes? Although he of course called out the importance of beliefs.

The best diet in the world, by anyone’s standards, will not keep you healthy if you have a belief in illness. A belief in health can help you utilize a “poor” diet to an amazing degree.

Session 660, Chapter 16, Nature of Personal Reality

… the whole session is excellent really and he had much more to say.

Which 80% or so of the food on the shelves is anything but pure - it’s processed obviously - but not just that, when the whole “eating fat must make you fat!” (erroneous) scare occurred, everything of course became “reduced fat”, but they added sugar. There is an acceptable tolerance limit for sugar for the average person of course, but the cumulative amount in these foods is sky high.

I will try and step off my sugar/carbohydrate soapbox, I’m only so passionate about it because I see obese people everywhere and I deeply care. I’ve already helped 3 of my friends lose significant amounts of weight, and that’s without exercise. I’ve already explained the error in comparing calories consumed vs. burned from exercise to the law of conservation of energy over here.

Anyway I’d love to hear more about “where the line is drawn” in regard to these root beliefs of physical reality. No doubt it’s a blurry line, since everything is an open system, but I’d like to get a better idea.

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The pure food/water reference is in Projections of Consciousness, yes. Can’t remember where the statement is regarding freezing to death. “Root belief” was Seth’s phrase with regard to believing all you like you won’t freeze to death and doing so, anyway, because of the superseding (root) belief we all agree upon in physical reality as terms of engagement and learning.

Natural man’s diet would have little sugar, and none processed, let alone something like high-fructose corn syrup. Consuming, in our culture, stupendously large amounts of such foods is foolish for most. I’ve seen numerous sethians say beliefs will overcome all and then they kill their pancreas, thinking beliefs can negate entirely aspects of physical reality. That said, there are few individuals who can consume lots of this stuff and be, merely, okay in health. Bodies are generally alike and remarkably individual, also.

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i am eating up all this information and am enjoying yours and @Christopher 's posts.

re: ego changes after hard drugs (e.g. LSD), my perspective was picturing this as the psychological ramifications on ego and psyche due to the ensuing experiences in the ‘mind’. i wasn’t even considering that seth was implying brain tissue damage from chemical reactions that are based upon ‘root assumptions’. very interesting.

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i am eating this up with a spoon! i find myself in your predicament also, which are they? (yes, and they could be different representations depending on the individual experience) your hunches as to which is the valid root assumption or truth and which events are body regulation resulting from beliefs seem to represent clarity and ‘feel’ to be right on track, which is part of the excitement. ;-D . i have not read about these particular areas in the depth that you and @anon38262219 have. now I must pose another question that has been poking at me long time…

i have always wanted to ask your thoughts (everyone’s) on HOW our thoughts, ideas, emotions and ‘preset blueprints’ that we choose might affect, create or be ‘reflected’ in our genetics, and here is an excellent article to provide an example of it in mass events(?), i just copied an excerpt from MSN yesterday…

["Our actions are often considered to be a product of our attitude or environment. But our genes may have more to do with this than we think. A new study found that a certain genetic makeup may be more prone to very violent behavior.

The study, published in Molecular Psychiatry, analyzed the genomes of 895 Finnish criminals who were placed in categories from non-violent to extremely violent based on the nature of their crimes.

Variants of two genes, MAOA and CDH13, were found to be associated with violent crime. Violent criminals, the 78 of whom had committed a total of 1,154 violent crimes, were linked most strongly to the genes, while the non-violent criminals were not associated with them.

It’s the first large-scale study to look specifically at genetics and criminal violence. MAOA, dubbed “the warrior gene” a decade ago by Science, the academic journal of the American Association for the Advancement of Science, has already been linked to aggression. The second gene, CDH13, has been previously linked to impulse control.

As the body of research relating genetics to criminal behavior grows, legal issues loom. Research on CDH13 has been decried by criminologists as abetting racist eugenic theories. Should genetic makeup play into a court’s consideration of a defendant’s responsibility for their actions? Genetics have appeared in defense lawyers’ arguments, and on at least one occasion has led to a lighter sentence."]

please, fellow forum ppl, take this and run with it!

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There are some links implied, as in Seth Talks, Seth speaks about a civilization that modified the organism to not experience aggression, it was however a serious mistake because aggression is not evil or even violent (Seth describes the blooming of a flower as an act of natural aggression). The civilization suffered major energy blockages, they also later attempted to breed it out as they succumbed (I don’t remember if this was their downfall or if that was a different matter).

Also remember though, that the expression of a gene is influenced by our beliefs. Science now acknowledges this as well to an extent, it’s a field called epigenetics. I actually read a book called The Biology of Belief that described the mechanism. There is a protein sheath on the DNA that allows or prevents various bindings, and while the DNA may be passed down and intrinsic, the protein sheath does respond to external factors, meaning the expression of a gene is fluid. Once more Seth called it in advance of the scientists.

These topics are getting out of my areas of expertise very quickly though.

I do wonder if there is a mental parallel between choosing our physical life and choosing our DNA. For instance, we chose to be born physical, so there are root assumptions, but reality is malleable to the influence of our belief. Similarly, we have a genetic blueprint, but we can change its expression. In both cases there is something ‘fixed’ (that we chose) but with great variation within it. The boundaries we’ve given ourselves in order to experience and grow. It may be that we are not able to change our genetic expression to something that wasn’t in our blueprint to begin with, as no (un)sheating of DNA binding sites can add something that isn’t there. But this was known and a conscious choice on our part as we became physical.

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That civilization was dying out because of their inability to deal with natural aggression. They married with other human species to avoid complete extinction. Seth said people who faint at the sight of blood, etc., are those who retain that a bit of trait expressed at a physical level from that civilization now gone.

We choose our abilities before birth. Now, having considered these questions, I surmise that we do much in this area–we choose the specific sperm (I think Seth says that) with the specific physical qualities. Thereafter, I’m sure that changes can be made at the DNA and molecular level. (We can create or uncreate physical objects, open locked doors, etc. so manipulation at this level must happen a lot.)

I hope to one day see a list on the Wikipedia Seth Material page that corroborates Seth as much as possible–this is perhaps the most dramatic one, as it was Seth who first stated that genes can change expression–this at the time was derisively laughed at by science. Now, they have a whole sub-field which they call epigenetics.

Seth talked about information about familial predecessors being passed along. We must remember that there are non-physical aspects of molecules. Likely, they can be compared to icebergs–most of their reality is unseen.

There is going to be a lot of research into genetics, going forward. We must remember the belief systems in play affect greatly the study outcomes.

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Choosing our genetics

The genes and chromosomes do not just happen to have within them the precisely definite coded information that will be needed. The data is impressed upon them from within. The identity exists before the form. You could say that the identity, existing in another dimension entirely, plants the seed into the medium of physical reality from which its own material existence will spring.

Session 626, Chapter 5, The Nature of Personal Reality

Chemical imbalances

What I forgot to mention before I went to bed was that of course many (most?) elements that appear in the brain originate in the conscious mind, and not the other way around. This is the case for chemical imbalances (I assume in regard to things like depression and psychosis), for instance.

One of the latest ideas is that certain mental conditions are caused by chemical imbalances.

Supplying these does result in some improvement, but such inequalities do not cause any disease. Your beliefs about the nature of your own reality do. If medication of that sort improves the immediate situation, the inner problem of beliefs must still be worked out. Otherwise other illnesses will be substituted.

Session 641, Chapter 10, The Nature of Personal Reality

(A page or two later.)

Even with so-called mental disorders, however, orientation with the body is very important, as are the individual’s beliefs about his own form and its relationship with others and with time and space. (Pause.) There will often be chemical imbalances in such a situation, unconsciously produced by the individual, sometimes in order to allow him to work out a series of hallucinatory events.

Altering genetic messages

Thoughts and beliefs do indeed bring about physical alterations. They can even — and often do — change genetic messages.

There are diseases that people believe are inherited, carried from one generation to another by a faulty genetic communication. Obviously, many people with, for example, a genetic heritage of arthritis do not come down with the disease themselves, while others indeed are so afflicted. The difference is one of belief.

The people who have accepted the suggestion uncritically that they will inherit such a malady do then seem to inherit it: they experience the symptoms. Actually, the belief itself may have changed a healthy genetic message into an unhealthy one. Ideally, a change of belief would remedy the situation.

People are not simply swung willy-nilly by one negative suggestion or another, however . Each person has an entire body of beliefs and suggestions — and these are quite literally reflected in the physical body itself.

April 9th, 1984, Chapter 5, The Way Toward Health

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I moved 5 posts to a new topic: Casual chat: getting to know each other

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Unless given the nature of ‘time’ we change what was ‘originally’ in our DNA. So many angles to look at all this from. If we can change the past from the present, why not this as well?

Pretty sure there is a quote about illness being healed in that way, by changing the body’s condition in the past, thus altering it in the present as well, but I can’t give you a reference.

As a general answer, isn’t it perhaps better to believe everything CAN be positively influenced by beliefs, no matter how much of a root reality it seems to be? (Obviously without taking stupid risks or doing something obviously detrimental). They are still ulimately root assumptions, not ultimate features of existence. But root assumption are so inbuilt they may be impossible to overcome for all practical purposes - as a rule. There may be some exceptions. What about the session, again I don’t know where, where Seth describes how a firewalker alters the normal laws of physics, so that they don’t get burned when walking across hot coals?

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Ahh yes you’re right!! I had forgotten about that! Yes yes! I had this exact thought about DNA and the fluid nature of time myself but I forgot about it in writing my post! Thanks Martin!

Indeed and let’s not forget about the “disentanglement with reality” inner sense. Although that seems to be an extreme case. These types of questions are precisely where I wanted to go with this topic.

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Here we are:

Now: apropos of your firewalker, fire of that temperature would indeed burn the flesh if it touched it in your practical reality. IN A MANNER OF SPEAKING, the man’s feet touch the ground but they do not touch the fire. The man believes his feet will not be burned. That belief generates certain actions or events, so that practically speaking, while he sees the flames, and perhaps smells the smoke, the heat of the fire will have no effect–because FOR HIM its character is changed. He ignores the evidences of his senses.

"For him, the area taken up by the fire becomes “dimensionally neutral.” For the time of his walk that space is empty. In a manner of speaking, again, he erases the fire’s practicality, SO THAT IT CAN HAVE NO EFFECT.

"If you have a light bulb lit, it is bright and hot. If you turn the light off, the bulb is still there. Its light
and heat become latent, but PRACTICALLY nonexistent. To your hand a light bulb that is not turned on will be cool. To your eyes it will not be bright. The bulb is still there, but its power is neutralized.

"Our firewalker turns off the fire–for himself, however, though its form, like the turned-off light bulb, remains. His faith is the power that neutralizes the fire.

“You live in a world of root assumptions, to which all agree. They are the ground rules of your reality–but not the ground rules of all realities or of all probabilities. Your firewalker inserts another probability, and hence reacts to and with that reality of the fire in ways that are not considered normal**. I have said his feet touch the ground but not the flames. Actually, what I can only call an invisible shield protects him from the flames, so that his feet and ankles are surrounded by an aura that repels the fire actively. This is a definite force, a psychic force field, if you will. This ability is quite ancient, though little known.”

The Personal Sessions, Book 4 pp. 87-89 (Thanks Rachel)

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This quote is crazy thought provoking.

I wonder what of inserting another probability where the extreme cold is non-damaging? To take us full-circle.

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They might not be applicable comparisons–the firewalk is short in duration so the focus needed to sustain remaining in that probability is short. Freezing to death is not so short and would require hours-long focus…

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I brought up in FANS about the possibility of there being a bank of diseases on our plane that people then use for their own purposes in trying to explain why people get sick with diseases that they’ve never heard of before. Kind of like there are basic rules governing this plane like gravity and such.

btw, @Christopher have you ever heard of intermittent fasting? There are variations but I followed the 8/16 method. You restrict yourself to eating only for 8 hours a day and then fast for 16 hours. So lets say you have your first meal at 10 am, you can eat up until 6pm.(8 hours) After 6pm, you cant eat anything again until 10 am the next day (16 hours)

The information I read was very interesting. It also spoke about how to idea that you have to be constantly feeding your body for your metabolism to be going is incorrect. It also mentioned how breakfast actually isnt an important meal.

I tried it, but didn’t actually weigh myself, and I found that after a day or so I was waking up with alot of energy. I also thought I would be starving but I wasnt since a lot of the fasting happened when I was sleep. It does require conscious attention because after a week I forgot that I was on it and just slid into normal eating.

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…same difference with checking into earth reality…you checked the box that you understood what you were about to get into, so you’re here, LOL…ron

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Stumbled across the quotes.

The fact remains that there are probable past events that “can still happen” within your personal previous experience. A new event can literally be born in the past — “now.”

On a grand scale this rarely occurs in such a way that you perceive it — and you had better underline that whole last part.

A new belief in the present, however, can cause changes in the past on a neuronal level. You must understand that basically time is simultaneous. Present beliefs can indeed alter the past. In some cases of healing, in the spontaneous disappearance of cancer, for instance, or of any other disease, certain alterations are made that affect cellular memory, genetic codes, or neuronal patterns in the past.

In such instances there is, as easily as I can explain it, a reaching into deep biological structures as they existed at one time; at that point the probabilities are altered, and the condition erased in your present — but also in your past.

(Pause at 10:01.) A sudden or intense belief in health can indeed “reverse” a disease, but in a very practical way it is a reversal in terms of time. New memories are inserted in place of the old ones, as far as cells are concerned under such conditions. This kind of therapy happens quite frequently on a spontaneous basis when people rid themselves of diseases they do not even know they possess.

Learning is not simply passed on from living tissue to living tissue — this your biologists have discovered — but it is also passed on through the body’s present corporeal reality, sometimes entirely changing the messages to past cells, that in your terms no longer exist.

Session 654, Chapter 14, The Nature of Personal Reality

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That’s what I was thinking of! Nice find. And ‘stumbled’? I don’t think so :smile:

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Hello everyone.

After re-reading NoPR and making some highlights, I encountered a single sentence that was quite the breakthrough for me on this topic. Here it is:

In somewhat the same manner, your physical brain is a doorway that triggers activity in your mind. Your beliefs then are largely responsible for the areas of the brain that you activate, and for the resulting nonphysical action of the mind.

Session 671, Chapter 20, The Nature of Personal Reality

I feel like this says everything. Mind is of course the origin, but mind creates brain which can also again shape the mind. Thoughts? Do you guys find this quote as evocative and helpful as I did?

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