Any method to improve your life is bound to fail because of your belief?

[happiness]

If you are seeking improvement in any area of your life, then you are already having the belief that your life is lacking. And because you have this belief, your life is really lacking in real life.

So in order to improve your life, you have to change your belief to a new one that says your life isn't lacking. But if you really believe that your life isn't lacking, then there isn't a need to improve your life in the first place! The very fact that you want to improve your life is a proof that deep down, you are having the very negative belief that is causing you the very problem you want to solve in the first place!

So does this mean that you are bound to fail if you are seeking any improvement?

The Nature of Personal Reality, page 297, third paragraph:
"If you are ill, remember when you were not. Search your life for proofs of your health."

But how do you know that all these actions to improve your health are not pretend? If you have to search your life for good health, doesn't that already show that deep down, you actually believe in ill health? If you really believe in good health, why would you want to find evidence of good health in your past? And why would you find it a need to execute a method to improve your health?

[LenKop]

Beware that amount of logic....

If you have to search your life for good health, does that already show that deep down, you actually believe in ill health?

But if you're searching for good health, doesn't that also mean that deep down you actually believe in good health?

Len

[Sena]

Seth

But how do you know that all these actions to improve your health are not pretend? If you have to search your life for good health, does that already show that deep down, you actually believe in ill health? If you really believe in good health, why would you want to find evidence of good health in your past? And why would you find it a need to execute a method to improve your health?

happiness, welcome to the forum and thanks for the interesting questions. As I see it, one of the main elements of Seth's teaching is that we have some beliefs which are unsound or unhelpful. I'll give a personal example. I had a painful toe for several weeks. I imagined that it was an ingrowing toe-nail, and I have a dread of surgery. Then I got round to looking at my toes carefully. I realized that one of my toe-nails had a sharp point and this was digging into the adjoining toe causing the pain. I cut the nail with the sharp point, then applied a little antibiotic ointment and a sticking plaster to the adjoining toe. The pain disappeared and I don't think I'll be needing surgery.

[Deb]

But if you're searching for good health, doesn't that also mean that deep down you actually believe in good health?

Good one Len, how do you always manage to get to the heart of the matter so efficiently?

@happiness, welcome to the forum. You might also enjoy The Way Toward Health. Acknowledging we are sick in some way is always the first step to changing it, but to focus on it would only bring more of the same. ("remember when you were not") Good health is our natural state, but I think the belief in the potential for illness is unavoidable in many societies and I don't think of it as a hinderance:

"They pick up their first ideas about health and disease from parents and doctors, and by the actions of those people to their own discomfiture. Before they can even see, children are already aware of what their parents expect from them in terms of health and disease, so that early patterns of behavior are formed, to which they then react in adulthood."
—WTH Chapter 7: May 13, 1984

I think illness or seeking improvement in any area always serves a purpose, whether it's getting to the heart of an inner conflict, aligning our outer consciousness with inner conscious guidance, or understanding ourselves better (beliefs). I look at my own desire to seek improvement in my life as sort of my internal GPS for whether I'm headed where in my 'right' direction. I think if I was totally content with everything about myself and my life, I wouldn't be here. My education would be completed.

This quote would also work if you were to substitute "The body's health" with happiness and "Poor health/ill" with unhappiness:

"The body's health is the expression of inner well-being. Poor health is an expression also, and it may serve many purposes. (Pause.) It goes without saying that some people become ill rather than change their activities and their environments. They may also become ill, of course, to force themselves to make such changes."
—WTH Chapter 4: March 25, 1984

[jbseth]

Hi happiness,

Welcome to the forum.


In your post above, you said:

If you are seeking improvement in any area of your life, then you are already having the belief that your life is lacking. OK. And because you have this belief, your life is really lacking in real life. OK.

So in order to improve your life, you have to change your belief to a new one that says your life isn't lacking. OK.

But if you really believe that your life isn't lacking, then there isn't a need to improve your life in the first place! OK.

The very fact that you want to improve your life is a proof that deep down, you are having the very negative belief that is causing you the very problem you want to solve in the first place! To me, this statement basically just seems to be a reiteration of your first two sentences, with some additional emphasis on the "very negative" belief.

Then you say, So does this mean that you are bound to fail if you are seeking any improvement?

I fail to see how you came to this conclusion, from what you wrote above. How did you get to this conclusion?


-jbseth