For most of us, the first Seth book we read was revolutionary thinking. It ran purely counter to what we had been raised with: our religious training, our cultural attitudes, even our practical and "factual" education. The whole history of humankind is rife with beliefs surrounding the ideas of helplessness and fear, dating all the way back to dawn. Seth suggested that this was all a bunch of hooey, and that it always has been.

So how did we all get started thinking this way in the first place?

Seth has spoken of the beginning of time for us, a time when there was gracious cooperation between humans and the material world, when we also had no imagined barriers between our human intelligence and our deeper/higher consciousness, when fear was not an element of materiality. (Perhaps this is what the allegory of the Bible's Garden of Eden describes in poetic language.)

As time progressed, (and I must use "time" here, as that is how our human mentality processes everything), and since we possessed powers to create materially at will, the course changed naturally: Humankind's consciousness had not yet evolved the peculiar self-controls necessary for responsible material creation. (Seth briefly alludes to some of the bizarre results, in his material.) Since consciousness is what we understand love to be, on this plane, we eventually needed to gain understanding that would help deter "loveless," because-we-can creation.

(Perhaps this is where, in highly symbolic terms, the story about the ejection from the Garden of Eden came in - and later, the fall from the Tower of Babel. Both of these stories are so clouded as to sound like fairy tales, but the symbolism and the parallels appear to be there.)

It seems likely that we evolved away from instant creation and an open "pipeline" to higher consciousness, to give us the opportunity to become self-aware and develop "muscles of responsibility" for our creativity.

Then, separated from material cooperation and higher consciousness, the perception of helplessness and fear came into being.......fear being the opposite of love. (Love, translated to all planes of consciousness, might be in-difference in the true sense of the word - including the in-difference that we had felt with the natural, material world.)

And, to drive the point home - at least in the realm of Christianity - we also created guilt.....guilt over having ever been thoughtless creators: Original Sin - the big OS (or operating system) for our Western culture. And oh, my, what nightmares that massive self-fear has elicited since, down through the centuries.

We flail ourselves with the world's ills, or dream up a doom and death diagnosis from the doctor over a medical test, pouring psychic energy into them, forcing the miserable details upon ourselves - following the rut deeper into the dark, until we shiver in terror over imagined consequences. Why? Because we were raised that way. It is ingrained to our culture to feel helpless, powerless, afraid and guilty. It is a worn track in our brains. What may start out as a neutral or even happy thought so often falls into the track of pessimism and negativity because that is the track that's worn the deepest.

Seth cautioned us against lazy thinking that would carry us down into a pit. He said, "Pay attention to what you're thinking," and sure enough, it contained a lot of garbage. How could we ever expect to create our happier reality if our thoughts were clogged with all this junk we didn't want anything to do with? And do we actually think we're going to save the world by agonizing over it?

Bill said to me, "I fall into that negative track so fast. One minute I'm thinking, 'Boy, the traffic is really heavy today,' and before I know it, I'm imagining being hemmed in on the bridge when it decides to collapse. Disastrous thinking has been a talent of mine. I've found I've got to have a real attitude about that part of myself that leads me into the pit. Now, when I catch myself at it, I say, 'F--- off!!' - several times, forcefully, if necessary - and it goes away."

I say it, too. A lot of times the only thing that's going to blast me out of the ditch I'm in is getting mean and yelling at myself. It usually makes me stop in my tracks and take a look around.

Ralph kind of sums it up for men: "We males of the world have always been at the front lines of defense. Because we have more muscle, we've always been expected to fight all the battles at a moment's notice. It makes us tough, hard, and it shortens our lives. So we slap on bumper stickers that say, 'Army of One,' and watch 'blood and guts' on TV for practice, and to assure ourselves that the good guys win. We feed on fear - it's our gender heritage."

Yes, nowadays we women are more apt to take up a man's role and feel our blood boil aggressively over the ills of the world - so we all watch 'blood and guts ' on TV for practice. Traditionally, though, women have responded with a bleeding heart. But, "My Lord!" I say, "Look at where I'm headed! Imagining all those poor children across the world being terrorized, starved, injured, abandoned and killed is about as helpful as sending a tanker full of rotten meat to them would be."

Would it be easy to go against the flow of this particular mass consciousness and imagine into being a reality where those children were loved, nurtured and safe? Not by a long shot. But it is every bit as much a valid reality as the garbage dump I accept because of lazy thinking, because of falling into a fear mentality.

Then, too, perhaps I have been heavily influenced by the idea of heaven being an infinitely boring place. If the best I can do is to conjure up a heaven that is no more than peace and quiet and fluffy white clouds, then it's no wonder my consciousness runs screaming from it.

Consciousness will expand. It will not stand for being bored. In lieu of my limited view of what a reality of love, light, and responsible creativity would be like, my consciousness chooses to be scared to death instead. At least it's not boring.

Ah, the crux of the matter reveals itself: Due to a long history of human thinking that views life on Earth as "a vale of tears," we have few resources when it comes to imagining and creating otherwise.

This is where, in the course of writing, I hit a solid wall that lasted for over a week and I couldn't write another word. Why? I know why - it's because this is where I had backed myself into a corner, roped off all the avenues back into the ditch. The only way left to go was into the light, to get myself onto the upside and then write about it. I didn't know how to do it on demand. Surely, the feelings of love/power/fearlessness/elation happen spontaneously or impulsively - but never in the normal course - never as the status quo.

You might say, "Well, it comes naturally to me!" Come on - you and I both know better. All I have to do is see your face to recognize the lifetime patterns of fear and defense that are etched there - it's not something one can hide. We all recognize a fellow ditchdigger when we see one, which includes about 99.9% of us, by the way. Luckily for the dignity (ego) of you and me, most fellow ditchdiggers don't know they're in one, much less that we are, too. So we can pretend to the average person that we have it altogether.

After a stalemate week, once again the powers of self-creation came into play: I stumbled into a movie on TV one night, "Date with an Angel," and the icon for love and joy solidified right there on the screen. The movie is silly - a piece of fluff, but the woman who played the angel, Emmanuelle Beart, put her all into it, and she somehow managed to characterize pure love, joy and fearlessness without the religious martyrdom nonsense.

And then, right on the back of that, in case the Angel wasn't enough, I fell into a "Funniest Home Video" that showed a set of 1-year-old quadruplets all laughing at once at their Daddy's funny sounds. A solitary one-year-old's pure, joyous laugh is enough to heat one's heart to ecstacy; four at once can just about send you over the edge.

All right - now's the time for ideas. What do we do to break the habit of sloppy thinking and create an upscale reality from the inside? Like Seth said, it's not easy, but it's simple - and he gave us a long list of ways to achieve it. Try the "Inner Senses" from The Seth Material or the concepts and exercises from The Coming of Seth and The Nature of The Psyche. This should keep us out of trouble for several lifetimes. Speaking of trouble, we must also be on the lookout for boredom creeping into our efforts. Keep the study dynamic; keep it moving and developing. If we try too hard for too long with the same exercise, then "idle hands are the devil's workshop" in a symbolic sense, and consciousness will look for other ways to become unbored.

In the external world, we must keep our own council, so that people around us don't start thinking we're losing our minds. The trick is in creating the inner life and fine reality while at the same time "playing the game" of the society that we are currently living within. We may find it easy enough to walk away from a conversation that threatens to drag us down, but if we can't gracefully extricate ourselves, we should still probably resist sharing our ideas. When we wake up one morning at the tail end of a dream that promises a new level of consciousness if we stay quiet and ride with it for the day - but we have a job to go to - it's probably best to play the game and call in sick rather than to actually tell the boss, "I need to stay home and be a tree, today."

Little by little, the external reality will change, and we will be able to see on the outside what is happening within. For the time being, though, it may seem a little lonely in the rarified atmosphere. Perhaps we QP-Seth people need to stick together more.