Fear

[larissastar]

Seth says that if we feel fear, we'll create that which we fear in our experience. But I haven't discovered his advice on how to manage fear. If a person's nervous system has been wired to be fearful from a very young age and if one struggles with anxieties and fears but works to have conscious thoughts that aren't fearful, can this person stop creating from fear with thoughts alone - even if the body is continuing to have fear responses no matter what she does?

I came across another teacher's teaching that in order to manifest, we must have attention AND intention (think about it AND believe in it happening) to manifest it here. That gave me great comfort. I liked not thinking that the fears that come up in my body are going to run the show for me. But I don't think Seth says anything like this.

Thoughts? And love and light to you!

[Deb]

But I haven't discovered his advice on how to manage fear. If a person's nervous system has been wired to be fearful from a very young age and if one struggles with anxieties and fears but works to have conscious thoughts that aren't fearful, can this person stop creating from fear with thoughts alone - even if the body is continuing to have fear responses no matter what she does?

Great question. Fear is a big issue, and it's root is belief. Just doing a quick search on the Seth search engine brought up 811 results!

I did come up with something from The Personal Sessions 1, deleted session from 01/20/71 where Seth talks about Ruburt/Jane going through some heavy fear issues, which were worsening her physical problems. Here's just a little bit from it:

"They are of course blockages of energy. As different fears are expressed the blockages disappear. One fear, expressed, will bring with it through association many others, relieving also various areas of the body. The fears must be consciously recognized, emotionally felt, and then discussed or cleared away.

[... 1 paragraph ...]

When one fear seems to be handled in such a manner, after a week or so it should be looked at again. Less emotion should be felt at each time. The pattern of worrying over many trivial affairs, of constant brooding, has been a camouflage to hide the basic fears. Now as the fears are faced these other habits will dissolve.

Your discussion this evening, and events since our session have been to the point, and beneficial. Particularly your comments concerning Ruburt's behavior with the first husband. When the two of you have had any personal difficulties then Ruburt became twice as angry and fearful about your parents. At one time he equated you with Walt in his dreams. The dreams were meant to show him he was repeating a pattern of behavior."

—TPS1 Deleted Session January 20, 1971

You might also take a look at the Compilation of Exercises from the Seth books. You can download the PDF and search for fear or belief. I see in NoPR Seth talks about altering a belief by substituting it's opposite. Seth had a lot of exercises for changing beliefs, and my thought is if you can recognize and then change a belief, the related fear falls away, which would also eliminate the physical fear response. Desensitization works great too for certain types of fear, I've used it on myself and also animals.

Sometimes all it takes is recognizing that belief/fear was something that was taught to you and it's not really yours—it's someone else's and not doing you any good or even harmful because it's life-limiting. Like this:

"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."
—NoPR Chapter 4: Session 619, October 9, 1972

Chapter 4 is entitled "Your Imagination and Your Beliefs and a Few Words About the Origin of Your Beliefs."

[inavalan]

"They are of course blockages of energy. As different fears are expressed the blockages disappear. One fear, expressed, will bring with it through association many others, relieving also various areas of the body. The fears must be consciously recognized, emotionally felt, and then discussed or cleared away.

This is similar to the way NLP addresses phobias and anxiety.

A phobia is rooted in the right hemisphere of the brain. Naming it you connect it to the left hemisphere. Grading it on a 10 point scale gives you a left brain reference point too.

Then you create a small antithetic image (happy, confident, safe, ...) in the periphery of your imaginary viewing screen.

Identify one concrete instance when your phobia / anxiety manifested. Visualize it big in the foreground, then swiftly swish / swap the two imagines: the phobia takes the smaller peripheral place, while the antithetic image is now large in the foreground.

Grade the phobia on the 10 point scale again. Likely, you'll get a lower value.

Repeat the whole loop, identifying other concrete instances, swishing the images, and then grading how you feel.

To be effective, this needs to be done in a light trance, easily achievable through relaxation.

[jbseth]

Hi larissastar, Hi All,


Larissastar, in your post above, you said: Seth says that if we feel fear, we'll create that which we fear in our experience. But I haven't discovered his advice on how to manage fear.

In, "The Nature of Personal Reality", Chapter 11, Session 644, Seth indicates that fear is related to beliefs (ideas). In this specific session, Seth says the following: (the bold font is mine.)

Fear, faced and felt with its bodily sensations and the thoughts that go along with it, will automatically bring about its own state of resolution. The conscious system of beliefs behind the impediment will be illuminated, and you will realize that you feel a certain way because you believe an idea that causes and justifies such a reaction.


Seth talks extensively about beliefs and how to change them in the book, "The Nature of Personal Reality".



In your post above, you also said: If a person's nervous system has been wired to be fearful from a very young age and if one struggles with anxieties and fears but works to have conscious thoughts that aren't fearful, can this person stop creating from fear with thoughts alone - even if the body is continuing to have fear responses no matter what she does?

What you're describing here sounds a little bit like early childhood PTSD. Unfortunately, I don't believe Seth ever said anything specific about PTSD and if he had, then maybe he would have told us some things about this topic that he hadn't ever mentioned before.  Then again, maybe whatever he would have said, would have been something that he had already shared with us. Who knows?

If fears are based upon beliefs, then people with early childhood PTSD may not be aware of what these beliefs are, where they come from or why they have them. In this case it may be helpful to talk with a counselor or a therapist so as to be able to identify what the fear is based upon, and the belief behind it so that the belief can be changed. Perhaps some other techniques like NLP, Tapping or Emotional Freedom Techniques may be helpful as well.



In addition to this, you also said: I came across another teacher's teaching that in order to manifest, we must have attention AND intention (think about it AND believe in it happening) to manifest it here. That gave me great comfort. I liked not thinking that the fears that come up in my body are going to run the show for me. But I don't think Seth says anything like this.

Seth does say something similar to this only he emphasizes the word, "expectation". In "The Early Sessions", Book 2, Session 76, Seth says:

If a man wants to change his fate, desire is not enough, but expectation is. Desire may grow into expectation, but alone it is not enough. Expectation is actually the main trigger that switches inner data into the realm of physical construction. Without it, no physical construction results.


-jbseth

[larissastar]

I couldn't have hoped for a more complete, thoughtful, and helpful response than this. Many, many thank yous!

[Sena]

They are of course blockages of energy. As different fears are expressed the blockages disappear. One fear, expressed, will bring with it through association many others, relieving also various areas of the body. The fears must be consciously recognized, emotionally felt, and then discussed or cleared away.

Deb, this is really useful to know. The quote is in fact from a deleted session:

"They are of course blockages of energy. As different fears are expressed the blockages disappear. One fear, expressed, will bring with it through association many others, relieving also various areas of the body. The fears must be consciously recognized, emotionally felt, and then discussed or cleared away."
—TPS1 Deleted Session January 20, 1971

larissastar, welcome to the forum and thanks for bringing up this topic.

[Deb]

Yes, a delete session. I'm SO glad Rick Stack et al were able to get the deleted sessions (and early sessions) published. There's way too much useful information in them. And to think there are still some unpublished tidbits out there just waiting to be discovered!

I feel there's enough Seth to read for the rest of my life. That makes me happy.

[LenKop]

we must have attention AND intention

Don't forget action.

Feel it. the emotion is the action. 'The road to hell is paved with good intentions'...i can't remember who said it, but without the actions that follow the mental imagery, then the fear might just cycle around and around. Facing it is not just in your head, but in your day to day life. Talking helps, reading helps, thinking helps, but stepping up to the plate and taking a swing also helps.

Len

[jbseth]

Hi All,

I also found the following quote from Seth on fear and negativity and how to deal with it.

TPS1 Session 478 (Deleted) April 28, 1969:

Fear of any kind, including fear of fear, is destructive. A negative thought gains in power to the extent that you fear it, and you had better underline that whole sentence. A better attitude is "Well, there is a negative thought, let's get rid of it." Now, mentally, have Ruburt pretend it is simply a weed, and mentally throw it over his shoulder after he has plucked it from the seed of his consciousness.

Now we will throw in something better. Even the word "peace" will do. He need not go about at the time searching for an antidote, you see. "Those aren't the kind of thoughts I want," that mental statement is a help. If the negative mood persists a while he should not think "Oh now this will be reflected in symptoms, what can I do?" This adds more negative connotations.

He should instead think "Well, this will pass, and I let it pass." Minimize its importance, if necessary, rather than overstate a projected negative reaction to an already negative mood.


-jbseth

[LoveIsWizardry]

Just wanted to mention, I know this hasn't been posted on in a while, but as someone who has struggled with extreme fear, PTSD, panic disorder and frequent panic attacks, as well as generalized anxiety, deep depression, mood swings, 'bipolar' and various other 'issues' since I was a young child (the first severe panic attack I remember, though I didn't know what it was at the time, occurred in the 2nd grade after moving overseas), Seth's advice totally works for childhood PTSD, and in my experience, I was better off with no therapist, because their training doesn't allow for this kind of paradigm shift. Just going to the source of a belief causing the fear and acknowledging it as a belief, over and over has shifted my life dramatically in a completely new direction. And even though the fears were programmed in childhood, in fact many of them I recognize as ones I picked up from my mother in infancy, you can absolutely find them. They're not hidden somewhere, though it does take awareness and the ability to sit with the emotion as you move backward to the belief. What Seth talks about with going back to childhood memories that are negative in nature and rewriting them with vivid pictures has also been very helpful for me. It's allowed for forgiveness in areas of abuse and betrayal that I never would have thought possible. This, coupled with replacing the fear of fear and fear of other 'negative' emotions with the excitement of the hunt for truth in myself has drastically changed my fear levels and ability to be in the world.

I was in therapy and on various medications for 17 of my 30 years, and I am now off all medication and live with a peace and joy I would not have thought possible. And don't sell yourself short and think you need help outside of yourself. The answers are all inside, you just have to look and listen for them. If you do ask for help, reaching out to your higher self or other selves can be very helpful as well. They'll answer, even though it may not be in the way you're expecting. And I find reading bits of the various Seth books daily helps remind me of the truth and keeps me moving toward higher and higher thoughts and vibrations.

[Deb]

@LoveIsWizardry welcome to the forum.

Thank you for such an uplifting and heartfelt post, and what a testimonial to the Seth materials! I found this especially beautiful and powerful, as this is what Seth was seeking all of us to learn:

And don't sell yourself short and think you need help outside of yourself. The answers are all inside, you just have to look and listen for them. If you do ask for help, reaching out to your higher self or other selves can be very helpful as well. They'll answer, even though it may not be in the way you're expecting. And I find reading bits of the various Seth books daily helps remind me of the truth and keeps me moving toward higher and higher thoughts and vibrations.

I'm so happy to know you've overcome the challenges you've had in your life. I wish more people knew about the Seth materials and embraced them as you have.

Please make yourself at home here at Speaking of Seth, I'm looking forward to hearing more from you!

[pyromancy]

Seth's ideas really do confirm something I've thought for a couple of years.

You manifest what you give attention to.

Give attention to people who are pure and friendly, and you will be uplifted by their friendliness.
Give attention to negative/hostile people and dwell in those places, bad things will happen. Their negativity will drag you down, and generally those kinds of people aren't easy to change. Trying to set an example by being very nice to a bad person will usually just lead to them trying to take advantage of a good persons generosity.

When I was younger and having a lot of emotional difficulties, the thing that often helped was taking pieces of obsidian either cut in large polished slabs like mirrors, or in cabochons/arrowheads and meditating with them. This volcanic glass has a very energetic vibration and it is especially felt when put under sunlight.

[jbseth]

And I find reading bits of the various Seth books daily helps remind me of the truth and keeps me moving toward higher and higher thoughts and vibrations.

Hi LoveIsWizardry,

Welcome to the forum.

I really like that – "Love Is Wizardry" - what an awesome concept. 

While I had an abusive father, I can't say that I've experienced many of the things that you've mentioned in your post. I'm really glad to hear that you've found the Seth information and have found it to be so helpful. I too find his information incredibly helpful.


In regards to your statement above, I find that oftentimes, when I'm reading something in the Seth books, I feel like I'm in direct contact with my inner self (or what some call their higher self). It doesn't feel like I'm reading a book, but rather like I'm meditating, and getting in touch with myself.

I think that my inner self uses the Seth material as a way to communicate with me.

Again, welcome to the forum.


-jbseth

[pyromancy]

I heard in one of the interviews on the Kevin Moore youtube channel where he interviews 2 guts who were in the Seth E.S.P classes and The Poet said when reading the texts, people often describe how they felt like they were remembering/being reminded of the info.

I related to that and I haven't even heard 10% of it all.