Seth Speaks: The Eternal Validity of the Soul by Jane Roberts is a book I'm listening to on Audible right now. I got into it from listening to Jerry and Esther Hicks, who channel Abraham Hicks. In one of their books, Jerry talked about how they got the inspiration for their teachings from running into this book, Seth Speaks.
What's really cool about this book is how it was created. Most books, you'd imagine the author sits at a table, writes things out, and that's how the book comes about. This book was dictated by a non-physical entity. Seth Speaks was dictated through Jane Roberts, who was an author, back in the early 1970s. It was given to her through a non-physical entity who dictated the book while she went into a trance, and then her husband, Robert Butts, would write down what she said. That's how this book was created, which is awesome. What a cool way to create a book.
What I'm finding is that the material in this book is inspiring. It is mind-opening. It has answers to big questions like: Why am I here? Who am I? What happens after death? These are questions that, the way I see it, can dramatically enhance, open, and allow your life to flow. If you've read this book, or if you want to get a deeper knowledge of yourself, it may be helpful for that.
If I had to summarize the book in one sentence
If I can summarize the main thing that's valuable out of the book in one sentence, it's this: you are currently experiencing a physical reality while the totality of your being is so much more. In other words, who you are is much more than even an idea of a soul. The way Seth, channeled by Jane Roberts, frames it is that in this physical reality you are, as you might think of it, a god. You are an immortal, energetic, creative essence that has consciousness as an aspect of its whole being. And you are creating the universe you appear to be in through your own thoughts, which are materializing and attracting everything into your life as you think about it. That, the book says, is who you really are.
So let me state it again in the simplest terms possible. The way I've come to believe it: you are an immortal god creator, and that's who you are. You are choosing to experience this physical reality now, and you are simultaneously experiencing many other things. You are focused now in this physical reality, which only appears physical. It really is just kind of what you are thinking about and experiencing, but it appears to be a physical reality.
There's much more to you than what you sense with your eyes, ears, nose, and mouth. The book describes you as intuitive, as telepathic by nature, as in fact even living multiple lives right now. Your consciousness is just focused on this physical reality at the moment, but it also routinely goes to focus on other realities when you go into the dream state. Most of these are not remembered when you come back into this physical reality.
You're an actor on a stage
You could think of it with an analogy. Who you are is an actor, and you could look at this entire physical life as a play. You are an actor playing a role in a play right now, and everybody else around you is an actor on a stage, and you are all doing a play together. You could look at it that you do this play every day. You go off stage at night when you sleep, you come back on the stage the next day, and really, dying is just going off the stage again and coming back on with some sleep and some light adjustments to your character. This is something I keep coming back to; I've shared before how I've come to see that life is a movie you chose to watch.
This knowledge, the way I see it, is extremely helpful to transcend almost every single physical difficulty. For example, many people are afraid of dying. If you were to think about dying, you might have a panic attack. A lot of people are afraid of things like being sick, or afraid of people leaving them. Some people's lives are full of fears, or they're depressed and they really don't like how things are. Almost all of these things can be completely transcended by having a connection with your highest self and an awareness that there is a lot more to you than what you think there is.
You think this body and this brain and the science of it all is just the way it is. When you realize that that entire perception, that entire way of seeing the world, is such a small part of a greater reality that you are a part of and can experience whenever you want to, everything changes.
Consciousness can withdraw from the body
Someone watching said something I think a lot of us feel: "I'm not afraid of being dead, but I'm afraid of how I might die — for instance, not being able to breathe until I die." According to this book, and in my own experience, the consciousness can actually withdraw its attention from a body at almost any time.
I have a story related to this. It's funny that I'm about to call what I'm going to say a good story, but it's very related. One story I read online, from somebody I was connected with for a while, was that one day he was in utter despair and trying to commit suicide. He hung himself in his closet. And right when he was on the edge of dying, he said it was as if the lights started to come on — that he could start to see his greater self, like a near-death experience.
Let me make another analogy to make this clearer. There's a writer named Anita Moorjani who wrote a very good book called Dying to Be Me. In her book, she talks about how she had the very end stages of cancer. The doctors had never seen anyone survive at the point she was at.
Anita describes your life as if you are in a dark factory, a dark warehouse, and all you have is a flashlight. You can shine your flashlight on each thing on the shelves. Some things you shine your flashlight on are horrible, or evil-looking, or scary — demons, murder stories, the kind of thing that tries to pop up in my news feed every day, something horrible. And you can also shine your flashlight on something beautiful — butterflies flying around, little babies, great magic, whatever you think is beautiful.
When you're crossing the threshold of death, it's like the lights of the factory come on. Suddenly you can see that you, as a human consciousness, in your conscious focus as an immortal creator on this physical body, have been like a little flashlight looking around in a warehouse, seeing a little bit here and a little bit there. And when you're letting go of this physical experience, it's like the lights in the whole factory come on. Now you can see not just what you're shining your flashlight on, but the entire factory. And it's massive. There's so much in it.
That's a similar kind of analogy to what that guy I read online described. He was almost dead, he had almost suffocated to death, and instead of it being a miserable, awful experience, he suddenly started to feel this euphoria, like almost entering heaven, starting to see lights and to see a greater reality he was a part of as this physical one came close to extinguishing. His girlfriend cut him down, which is why he's here in the flesh to tell this story still.
All the times I was on the edge of ending this physical incarnation, the one thing that truly stopped me from doing it is that I had some deep level of knowing that it would not end things. If that didn't result in annihilation, then I certainly would not want to go through with it. That's pretty frustrating, because when consciously you believe death is annihilation, then taking your own life looks like a way out — and yet you have this deep knowing that it's not true. The deep knowing for me ended up very clearly winning out: you don't just get to get out of this experience. The way I've come to believe it, you are immortal, you have an immortal personality that's always growing and expanding and changing. And that sounds like a lot of fun to me.
Someone in the chat said, "When you're surrounded by darkness, it's time to shine and be the light you seek." The beauty of reading a book like this is seeing that if you are surrounded by darkness, it's because you've chosen to be surrounded by darkness — that you have decided it should be dark, and therefore it is dark.
You experience death based on your beliefs
I really like the part in Seth Speaks where Seth is talking about how people experience death based on their beliefs. From our point of view they're people; from the book's point of view it's a bit more than that. But if you believe you're going to heaven, when you die you will experience heaven. However, you will likely become a bit bored with heaven, and then you will move on to another experience, either non-physical or another physical one.
If you believe you're going to hell, you will find yourself briefly in hell, at which point you'll see that it's an illusion, that you've created it, and you're done with hell — now you're going to go do something else with yourself. If you believe there's utter annihilation, there may be a brief period of going into the void and nothingness, after which point, bam — just like going to sleep. It feels kind of like a death when you go to sleep. You go into nothingness, you don't remember what you did, and all of a sudden you're back in another physical form.
That's the number one thing: once you're working with this knowledge, almost every single difficulty in life is either minimized, becomes fun, or goes away completely.
The way I see my own role, I'm here to help remind you of your deepest self — the self that existed before you were born, that is enjoying this physical experience now, even if you think on an ego level you hate it. Your deepest self is finding this whole experience joyful. And then there's the self you will be when you pass on. If you've never looked into it, it can be worth looking into deep meditation and astral projection a little bit.
"How do I stop hurting when someone I love suddenly acts like I don't matter?"
Someone asked me a question I think most of us have lived through: if someone you have a close history with is very caring and acts like you mean a lot to them one day, then out of nowhere acts like you don't matter — and you love them, so you want to reach out, but you feel like you shouldn't — how do you choose not to hurt when it happens? How do you truly not care, without not caring for them?
Naturally, that's an experience I've been through plenty of times, as I'm sure most of us have. Here's the number one point that will make everything else seem trivial by comparison. The way the book frames it, you are the god, the creator of your entire universe. Every single thing that's happening is because you have decided and created it that way.
Now, you may not be conscious that you're intentionally doing it like that. You may not be conscious that on some level you wanted this person — who's not really a person, who's another immortal soul, but let's stick to the earthly realm here — to act this way to teach you this lesson. But once you are conscious of that, you just can't see it the same way anymore. Because of things like the law of attraction — that you attract things into your life based on how you're thinking and your deepest beliefs and needs — when you see that this person is acting exactly how they've chosen to, and on the deepest level how you wanted them to right now, then you can be at peace with it.
The way to get to peace with it is to ask, what can I learn from this situation? Because ultimately there are two purposes to every situation: to help you learn, grow, and expand, and to help you experience joy. Those are the two purposes that underlie every single situation. And where your creative power comes in is what kind of story you tell. If you tell a story that is painful and hurts and is something awful, then you shall experience that story. If you tell a different story, you shall experience that story instead. And if there's a disconnect — if you feel like you've lost power over the story — then you can get help, just like this person did, by reaching out to other people.
The Christmas Eve fight that never really happened
Let me give an example. The last significant difficulty or struggle I had with my wife lasted about two or three hours on Christmas Eve and about two or three hours on Christmas morning. There was very little in terms of what you would have seen externally. You would have seen my wife saying some things you might have interpreted as mean to me on Christmas Eve. You would have seen me being kind of all "Jesus, I'm above all this," which my wife says is really annoying. And then you would have seen me getting upset internally and making maybe one or two comments that were a little in that direction.
What you would have also seen is that when I ask for help, I pray: God, please help me. I really pray to my highest self — please help me remember that I love my wife, and that that is what's true, and what matters, and nothing else does matter. You'd see me calling up my mother and saying, "Hey Mom, this is what I'm thinking. I'm thinking I don't deserve to be treated like this. However, I want to enjoy Christmas with my wife. I want to remember and totally focus on the fact that I love my wife." And you'd see me calling my sponsor from AA with the exact same thing.
What you'll notice is a total focus on what I want, what I like. If I allow myself to shift into what I don't like and what I don't want, however uncomfortable it is, it creates that powerful a desire to go back the other way. I'll say, look, I can't stand the pain of judging my wife and feeling like she did something wrong and feeling sorry for myself, especially on Christmas Day. I want to enjoy this day with my family. I really want to just remember I love my wife and forget anything else. I want to make this a beautiful Christmas Day, and I'll do what it takes to make that happen.
All of a sudden, it's just like the switch happens. And when you switch that mental energy, guess what happened? When I focused totally on "I want to have a great Christmas, I refuse to be mad at my wife, I will focus on how much I love her," we did not have to have any significant discussion at all. When my energy changed, her energy changed.
What I notice is that energy and that thinking is so powerful that even if I have never met somebody in person, and even if that person gets upset with me and I refuse to get upset back at them, then from my point of view they've done nothing upsetting — no matter what has been said to me in a message. From my point of view, they've done nothing upsetting.
That often helps me evaluate whether I want to keep a relationship active. Some people who have gotten upset and sent me messages that I could interpret, if I chose to, as mean or nasty, I sometimes interpret instead as: this is a relationship I would like to let go, and I'm open to letting it go, and I will essentially do nothing except put loving thoughts out for this person until that's what they give back. In some cases the relationship gets let go and the person moves out of my life, whether it's a follower or somebody I used to be friends with. In other cases the person will seemingly have a change of heart. I'll get a message a few days later saying, basically, whatever the thing was before didn't happen, or "sorry about that." And from my point of view there's no need for any apology, because there was no problem to begin with. I maintained a love for the person the whole time in my head, so there was no difficulty.
I'm even grateful for the chance to discipline my thoughts in that direction. If I get a message from one of the people I see every day — somebody who has done a lot to help me, whether by being here and chatting, or by supporting me, or being a moderator — I have an emotional, telepathic connection with them. And if suddenly I get a message where something is awfully wrong and they don't want to follow me anymore, that gives me the opportunity to catch the reaction that comes up in me — the urge to tell a story about how what I've seen is wrong, how I don't deserve this, how this person should be different. I'm actually thankful for that opportunity to correct my thinking, to refocus and say: this person is giving me a chance to practice what I preach. I will continue to love this person exactly as they are, not expect them to change at all, not find anything wrong with them, not find anything wrong with the message they sent me. I'll just forget immediately anything that's not relevant, and I'll respond with whatever positive I have to say.
In that respect, I'm grateful for these opportunities to practice and level up my practice of being the personality that is most fun to me — kind of an all-loving, caring, kind master, like a saint. That's what feels fabulous to me.
When you think of it that way, you are the creator of each story in your head. And you can also see that everyone around you is creating stories as well. I look at it now, when my wife is upset with me for something, as long as I feel good about what I did — and it's important for me to only do things I feel good about and feel are right in each moment — then it's very easy to accept anyone else's disagreement with that. If I do something that I feel is wrong, then anyone else's reinforcement of that only magnifies my own feelings.
For example, Laura and I, maybe a year ago, went out for a lunch date, and we had what you might think of as a bit of a fight. Not outwardly very bad, but back and forth, the usual thing where you say mean things to each other. Laura very quickly was able to forgive me, and it took me hours to forgive myself, because I didn't like what I had said to her. That argument really showed me a valuable lesson: it doesn't matter what she does. She can say I'm a selfish prick who has never satisfied her, who has never been a good friend to her in bed, who was more fun when she was drinking, who's not present as a father, and isn't a very good son or brother while she's at it.
My wife gives me spiritual quizzes
She could say all those things, and I have the ability to remain undisturbed by what she has said. In fact, I can see that I love her for her sassy mouth, and I love her for testing me. I now look at it that Laura gives me frequent spiritual quizzes. Anytime I notice I'm struggling with one, that's a learning opportunity. And now I pass the majority of the little quizzes she gives me.
It's really cool, because the better I do, the better she does. I've seen her level up some of the things she was struggling with. She would take it very personally if I was upset. Now she's able to ask me, "Hey, does you being upset have anything to do with me?" And I'll be funny and say, "I wish it did, but it doesn't. Of course, it's only my own emotions, it has nothing to do with you. I appreciate your support through this experience." And she's like, "Good. Now I don't have anything to worry about, and I can proceed being happy without being disturbed by you going through some emotions."
I love having these conversations, because some of the teachings I share — just like the teachings I enjoy from others — can make a huge difference in your life. I get great joy in thinking about how much joy you can experience as a result of what we're talking about.
On leaders, war, and forgiving the worst things you've done
Someone brought up scripture — the idea that God says to follow the laws and leaders of the land, that they've been put in place, so do what they say. There was a thread of this about the military, too. Someone said, "You did exactly what your leaders asked of you, in turn saving millions of lives. Thank you for your service."
I'm a big believer that we get the leaders that are a reflection of ourselves — that we get the kind of leaders who reflect our collective consciousness. The more we raise our own soul, the more we learn and grow, the more we become the change we want to see in the world, and our leaders reflect that.
One of the people watching shared something heavy. He said: "I'm a U.S. Army vet. I've had to kill my fellow man on multiple occasions. I was a Ranger. I killed on orders. But almost all religions say killing is a sin. I have chronic PTSD now. Advice?"
Here's how I want to answer that, and it starts with a confession of my own. There was a time, especially when I was drinking, but sometimes even when I was sober, when I had an issue with being cruel to my animals. I would kick them or hit them. That left me feeling very bad about myself — and when you feel bad about something, that's an indication that you're either thinking or doing something that's not in sync with your highest self.
What I found is that in order to fully forgive myself and actually stop the behavior, I ironically and kind of rudely needed to talk with other people about that experience. I talked about it with my wife. I said, "Yes, I hit our dogs on these occasions, and this is what I did." One night I threw the dog into the pool — I don't even know how many times — until it pooped, it was so scared. Of course it was an intense level of vulnerability to talk about those things. I cried many times over it.
I told my mother- and father-in-law how their big dog had stayed over at our house, and I told them, "I've hit your dog, and I feel bad about it, and it will never happen again." Here's what really helps with things like that. Because, the way I believe it, we are immortal, telepathic souls, my in-laws already knew — if not consciously, then unconsciously. For me to bring it out in the open like that and state my new intention — that I will be a man of peace — made a dramatic difference. I remember my mother-in-law saying one day that they couldn't leave their little dog with us because I might kill it, which is exactly how I felt. They made arrangements for the big dog to come over, and they gave the little dog to somebody else to watch, because they intuitively knew that the way I behaved at the time, that little dog was not going to make it.
Some people have told me after meetings, "Jerry, you can't talk about that. PETA people will be all over you." And I say it's important to be able to talk about our darkness — to be able to talk about the ways in which we behaved that we've since learned not to. It's important that we be able to talk about this so that all of us can get these things out from inside of us, and then we can set new intentions for our behavior, and each of us can forgive ourselves.
I bring this up to tie it into that veteran's question. One day I shared about hitting my dogs in an AA meeting, in more graphic detail — I probably described a particular incident in terms of every single slap. A man who was struggling to get sober, maybe sober a few days if sober at all, came up to me extremely angry. "I can't believe you said that." He was so fueled with anger that he said he needed to leave the room, and that he was afraid he would hurt me. I held a loving space for this man, because I realized he felt that way because of how he felt inside himself about things he had done.
To my knowledge, I have not killed or significantly harmed another human being. But I have certainly hurt my dogs — I choked one of my dogs one night, and I'm lucky that nothing lasting ever happened to any of my animals. By sharing my inside, deep darkness, it brought his out. In order to protect himself from his own, he latched onto mine. I consciously said, I'm going to help this man get to his and see if I can help him forgive himself. Sure enough, he talked to me. He'd been in the military, and it sounded like he had killed someone there. So when I talked about hitting an animal, it brought out his having killed somebody. Regardless of whether he was ordered to, he still felt horrible about it, and he was still struggling to forgive himself.
What I can say is that, the way I've come to see it, there is nothing that is truly wrong in this world. Even things as extreme as murder, or physical abuse in any form to humans or animals — there's nothing that is truly wrong in this world when you go back to who you really are. The way the book frames it, you are an immortal soul. You have lived and are living many other experiences. You've died, you've been killed before, you've killed others before. All of us, on the deepest level, have been through and done a whole lot of things in our immortal experiences. And you are worthy of forgiving yourself. I've come to feel that in a very real sense no one is innocent, because I believe we chose to be here for every bit of it.
I remember a conversation I had with a rector at an Episcopal church — which is like a priest at a Catholic church — in the process of doing my fifth step for Alcoholics Anonymous, which is basically confession. I went in with my whole list of sins: all the porn I'd watched, experiences I'd been through as a child, the girls I'd paid to hang out with me as an adult, the strip clubs, all of it. I laid it out on him.
The key thing is what he said. He said, "Well, God forgives you." And he said, "I forgive you." Those two things were easy for me to accept. I figured, God the divine creator created me like this — of course he forgives me, he did this, of course God understands me. And I thought, this man is very holy at an Episcopal church, of course it's easy for him to forgive me, he hardly knows me and he's very godly.
But then he said the last key thing: "Can you forgive yourself for what you've done?" He said, "By forgiving you, I'm not excusing you or applauding the behaviors you exhibited. What I'm saying is, can you forgive yourself, and go and sin no more?" That's when I cried in his office. That's when I was able to really forgive myself.
He also made a point I had never looked at before. He said you didn't do anything alone. With my sexual experiences, for instance, he asked me something I'd never thought about. He said that often, as a child, if you've been through these things, you were initiated into them by an adult at some point. I had not consciously remembered that until he said it. He really made the point that we don't do things in isolation. If you have taken the life of another person, you were not just an evil demon who went and took somebody else's life — you were in service of a bigger picture. And the person whose life was taken, on a law-of-attraction level, on the deepest soul level, may have agreed to that before they incarnated. There's another way to think of it besides "you committed murder and you are an awful person, you are a sinner."
I look at it that if I go around being afraid of being murdered, thinking about being murdered, then I am actually praying to be murdered, and I will call the attention of whoever is in a place that wants to murder, so that they will be attracted to murder me instead of someone else. That's how I look at all kinds of violence — that you attract these situations. So the perpetrator is just as much a victim of the situation as the victim is. The situation has been attracted together, which means anything you've done is completely forgivable, under the idea that you go forth and sin no more and help someone else.
I'm honestly not in the best position to help someone who has killed another human being in this life and is struggling to forgive themselves, because I haven't done that in this life. The way I believe it, I have past lives where I murdered many, many human beings — I was a German in World War II, so I did a whole lot of murder in that life, and I can relate to it on a past-life level. But I don't have as powerful a connection to it in this present life. By contrast, I know alcoholism firsthand from getting sober in this particular life, which makes me very uniquely suited to help another alcoholic.
The point is this: when you can forgive yourself for the worst thing you've done, and understand you didn't do it alone — that somebody else maybe encouraged you, that if you were in the service you were placed in a position to kill someone with the participation of a lot of other people — then not only is it possible to forgive yourself, it's possible for you to be happy about your experience, because you are now equipped to help someone else. I know lots of people in Alcoholics Anonymous who've killed other human beings, and the ones who have forgiven themselves and gotten right with God go out and help others, and they're extremely effective at it. They help other people who've killed and walk them through that same process of forgiveness.
Yes, there is a taking-responsibility portion — that on a law-of-attraction and thinking level you brought that into your experience, and so did whoever else was there with you. I used to think about being on both the giving and receiving ends of a lot of violence, and I'm grateful today that I've reprogrammed my thinking through the process of forgiving myself.
I know some people will take offense at this and find something wrong with it, and that's because of the consciousness you're in. If you are in a perpetrator-and-victim consciousness, then you simply are not seeing the bigger picture of how all reality plays together. A book like this is very helpful for getting into that bigger picture. As long as you see perpetrators and victims outside of you, you will play the perpetrator or the victim inside. If you see the law of attraction, if you see oneness, if you see that each of us attracts into our lives the experiences we want to have on our deepest levels, if you see that you are the creator of your own reality, then you truly are not a victim of anything, and you are not a perpetrator of anything, no matter what you've done or been through. There truly is nothing right or wrong in life outside of your own judgment of it. Then you have a chance to be peaceful, to be of service on this planet, helping lift all human beings and all consciousness up, and to truly enjoy who you really are at the deepest level.
"My dad passed away two nights ago — could he hear us?"
Someone shared something that brought tears: "My dad passed away two nights ago. We had an amazing connection. I consider him my best friend, and maybe even a soulmate. He couldn't speak for six days leading to his death, so we sang to him and spoke in his ear. Do you believe he could hear us or feel our presence? He battled prostate cancer for eight years like a champion. He didn't take his last breath until I went in to see him alone. I hope I get to talk to him one day."
Absolutely. I am certain that if your father wanted to hear you, he could have heard you, and I'm guessing he certainly did want to hear you — therefore you were very clearly heard. And the fact that you were there for his last breath makes it very clear to me that he chose to withdraw from that physical body to show you that he was very aware of you.
Not only do we live on — we have always lived, and we'll always live.
The past, present, and future are all happening now
This book gets even deeper into it, and I really like that it pushed the limits of my thinking. Seth says that the past, the present, and the future are so full of possibilities. We think in terms of a linear thing — the past was a certain way, the present is how it is, and the future, while we don't know it, is going to be one way. But Seth says there is a realm of potential paths. There are ways things could be in the future, and there are just the same a range of ways things could be in the past. And not only that, but there are possible presents as well.
There is a range of possibilities for how you could go through this day — practically an infinite range — based on what you want to experience. And it also holds for the past: there is a range of possibilities for how the past could have happened.
Have you ever talked with somebody and you had this idea of how something was, and they had a very different idea of how it was, and yet you know you're right? What's cool is, they may be right also. In the past, you may have had an experience that was completely valid that totally conflicts with their memory of it. You both may actually have experienced the past differently — you both may have experienced a different possible past. The way this book makes it clear, it's kind of an illusion that we're going through linear time, when really everything is happening all at once. There is not a past or a future. Your ideas of the past and the future happen now, in the perception of consciousness. The idea of the past and the future is ultimately an illusion, because it's all simultaneously happening at the same time.
That veteran I mentioned said, "Love you, man, sorry I brought it up." But bringing stuff like that up is life-changing. It's a demonstration: the path to healing comes through the path of sharing. As long as I wouldn't share my alcoholism and all the reasons I hated myself, I also was not open to healing. By healing, I mean getting to a place where I love who I've been in the past. I wouldn't change it. I would not go back into my past and change one single thing I've ever done. I'm not sorry for anything I've ever done in the past, even when it hurt people, even when it was offensive. My life has played out just how I've manifested it.
The value of everything you could look at that's negative — all those times I drank and hated myself and said nasty things to people, threatened people's lives, was cruel to my animals physically, was cruel to people around me emotionally and verbally — I wouldn't change any of it, because now I know with great clarity what I do want. There's a process in life of contrast.
We came here for the contrast
In the book I read and talked about before this one, The Vortex, it makes clear that we crave contrast — that we wouldn't want a planet where everyone was just like me. As much as I might sometimes think that would be great, and you might think, wow, it'd be nice if everybody was really happy and peaceful and kind and caring — if the planet was like that, I'd probably become an evil villain just to make it interesting. We don't come to these lives wanting a boring, predictable experience. We want contrast.
The way I see it, on some collective level we want some of us to be raised in very nice, kind, loving homes, and others of us to be raised in abusive and miserable homes. We want some of us to live very well and others to be dirt poor in poverty. We want some of us to be generous healers who get crucified because they're so great, and others to be miserable dictators who help millions of people be murdered. On the deepest level, as immortal souls, the way the book frames it, we are enjoying this drama, this drama of life. What we think would be one of the worst things that could happen — total conformity — would actually be boring. Each of these contrasts shows us something to learn, helps us grow, gives us new experience, and through that, lets us live the joy of life.
Today, I would not trade any of my contrasts from my past. I am equipped now, because of what I've seen and been through, to live how I'm living today. Because I've sinned, I'm equipped to go forth and sin no more. Because I've sinned, I'm equipped to understand the sinner. The original meaning of the word "sin" was to miss the mark — like if you fired an arrow at a target and missed it, that was a sin. If you've missed the mark of joy and happiness in your past, the unique ways in which you've missed, or sinned, empower you to connect with others who can relate to you.
That's why Alcoholics Anonymous works so well for me. When a girl whose boyfriend just broke up with her and left, who's been through tough relationships and hates herself and is trying to do better, pours her heart out to me, I understand her. I have empathy. I can remember feeling how she feels, I can experience some of those same feelings with her in the present, and I can show her how to love herself in the middle of all those feelings — because I'm able to love myself in the middle of any kind of feeling.
Some of us think it's dangerous to understand at that deep a level — that if you understand how somebody could murder people, or how somebody could abuse someone else, you must be capable of it yourself, or you're somehow going to do it. I say the opposite. Those of us with the greatest understanding are the most able to help others who are secretly going through these things to heal. We are the ones best equipped to help others get out of it.
Mastering the law of attraction in one area, then every area
Someone in the chat said, "I've always known about the law of attraction, that we put into the universe what we get back, but I feel I'm really getting it even better now as I'm going through such a transformation. It's an amazing help." I love that, because I feel the same way. I'm getting down how the law of attraction works — that I get what I think about. So when I think about how amazing this community is, how much you all give to support me out of the generosity you feel, how grateful I am to do what I do, I'm attracting more support for that.
What can be beautiful is when we learn to apply this in one area of our life, often through pain. One area, like our romantic relationships, may bring us horrible pain as we go through the same kinds of things again and again — whether it's abuse, infidelity, or a partner with some kind of disease like alcoholism. My wife certainly attracted that. From what she describes, she had a very nice first boyfriend, which wasn't that much fun for her. After that, she attracted and had long-term relationships with a couple of addicts and alcoholics. We've both had the chance to learn these things together.
I remember Wayne Dyer talking about how his mom, whom he thought was an angel, attracted his father, who was an alcoholic. Then she got rid of him, kicked him out, and attracted another alcoholic just like him, then got rid of that one and attracted another. There might have only been two or three, but the beauty of it is, once we learn this in one aspect of our life, we see that the romantic partner who is with us now is a function of what we're attracting and thinking about — not just them, but all similar situations. If we can master and see how the law of attraction works in one aspect of our life, then we can put that into every single aspect.
For example, I've got this down with my wife and my relationship, and it's been very smooth for quite a while. But I've only just got this down with my business. I had it down pretty good at some points, then wandered off and had to learn it again. I had a period where, even though externally my business looked really successful — making over $100,000 a year in profit and hundreds of thousands a year in income, which externally would have looked fantastic to you — internally it looked like a failure to me, because of how I was judging it. I went around being afraid of the money running out. Sure enough, what I thought and felt internally manifested into reality.
On the exact opposite side, at my lowest point financially a year and a half ago — the lowest of my whole life, which was surprising and very painful to arrive at after having been at my highest point financially just a year or two before — it came right back to that basic lesson: I'm doing this. You can't put on a show externally to prove to people how wealthy you are when internally you feel poor, you feel lack, you feel like you don't have enough — because then that's what you're attracting.
Here's what was really cool. At the low point of my finances, visiting a bankruptcy lawyer, I suddenly got to the point of, I'm going to disregard my external circumstances. I see that I created this financial mess with my own thinking, and I am now highly motivated to change my thinking and to remember what I really did that worked. What really worked with my business and my finances was to see that today I have enough, and I'm excited about what's coming, and I feel wealthy, and I have everything I need. Ironically, from that mindset, external displays of wealth are not necessary. I can drive around my fifteen-year-old car, and I have no need to show other people — other immortal souls — how wealthy I am by what car I'm driving, because I know and feel I have all the wealth in the world inside.
Feeling wealthy means cutting what doesn't bring joy
I have no need to try to be flashy, or even to have things that don't bring me joy. Ironically, when you feel wealthy, it encourages a cutting of things that aren't necessary. It seems contradictory, but often from a place of lack we think more is better. So if I have more things, and I can spend more of my money to show how externally wealthy I am, then maybe it'll help me feel that way internally. But it's the other way around. A lot of the people who look wealthy from the outside, you often suspect they're projecting that from a feeling of inadequacy or lack on the inside.
Your life is filled with magic. It's filled with possibility. The way I've come to believe it, you are immortal, you are eternal. In fact, to some degree, you die a little bit each moment and are reborn a little bit each moment.
None of the cells in your body are the same
As this book discusses, none of the cells in your body are the same as they were seven years ago. You have an entirely different body. Imagine if you had a car that you drove, and every single part of that car had been progressively changed out over seven years — when you bought the car, not one part in it is the same now. That begs the question: is that still the same car? What is a car?
What this brings it down to is that it's all about how you think and your ideas. Really, there's not a Jerry Banfield that exists anywhere in physical reality. If you go to each cell in my body, none of them knows anything about Jerry Banfield, and yet they're supposedly part of the body I think of as mine. My body is kind of like a company. When you work for a company, you are part of the company, but you are not the company. And there's also nothing you can point to and say, "This is the company." The company is just an idea — a collection of people, processes, materials, wealth. Each individual employee, whether the CEO or the janitor, comes and goes. You can't ever put your hands on what exactly the company as a whole is. What you think of as your body is the same thing.
There are new cells. You're literally breathing in new air, adding new elements into your body every single moment and expelling some of them the next moment. There's almost no consistency to who you are as a person. What's fun is that, as Seth talks about in this book, what you think of as a physical body that's stagnant actually phases in and out of reality constantly.
I've noticed this. On the rare occasion I have any kind of physical symptom, I've noticed that the symptom actually phases in and out of reality. If I pay close enough attention, I'll notice that — for example, several months ago I had a little bit of stomach pain, and I noticed it phase in and out of existence. "Oh, there it is, right this moment. I'm feeling a little tension in my stomach." Then I continue giving my kids a bath. I check back in. "Hmm, there's no symptom right now. That's interesting. It's not here." Then all of a sudden, "Oh, it is present now." Then I pay attention to something else, check back in, and it's not here. This thing in my body is literally phasing in and out of existence. It's being born, and it's dying, and it's coming back, and it's going. This is the same idea I keep working with in my own life — that I am creating every experience in my body.
When you realize the impermanence, the constant change of the physical, then you are also attracted to recognize what's permanent. What's permanent is the essence you are. The real you — beneath, inside, above, all around — is permanent. All the transitory physical experiences are not permanent. They can be permanently remembered and drawn from and recreated, but we're constantly in a state of flux and change. At no moment is what you think of as your body the same as it was the last moment. You are carrying around a bunch of dead cells right now, and you have cells being born inside of you. Humanity collectively is like that too.
That's what helps you not to suffer. Wouldn't it be ridiculous if all the cells of your body mourned every time some of the cells died? I think it'd be ridiculous if a bunch of the cells in my body all got upset because a couple of the cells died. There are so many cells — who cares? So what if some died from a cut, others from a scrape, others from natural causes? What difference does it make? Same with humanity. There are hundreds of thousands of humans being born every day — about 200,000 more being born than dying every day. Humanity collectively is growing. Why even pay attention to, or be upset about, the few hundred thousand human beings who are collectively disincarnating from the greater human body on this planet, so to speak?
The idea of all this is to get into a place of peace, where you're able to experience the joy of this moment and to get excited about learning and expanding consciousness. What's beautiful is that when you're truly happy with where you're at, the external is joyfully taken in and appreciated — and also not needed for validation or support.
Pay attention only to what you like
It doesn't matter how many people are choosing to support me, or who's canceled, because I'm only paying attention to who's joining. When someone new becomes a supporter, that's exciting. When you only pay attention to that which you like and enjoy, you're also free from the suffering of paying attention to all the things you don't like. The news is one big temptation to focus on things you don't like, which is why I ignore it. My suffering will not help anybody feel better, unless I learn from it, feel better, and can talk about it. If this is the kind of conversation that resonates with you, this is exactly what we keep going together every day inside the Jerry Banfield Family.
Some of my live streams have had huge view counts, and I'm sure some of them will again, but the key is to be in touch with your highest self. I have ideas for things I could do to get a whole lot of views, but it goes back to: what are my intentions? What do I really want? What I really want is to love what I do, to share that love with you, and to give you a chance to notice that love in your own life. That's what I really care about. I know that whoever is most receptive to my message will be drawn almost effortlessly to me. It doesn't matter if there are a thousand people watching who don't resonate with my message — they don't matter. If you enjoy conversations like this one, you can find more of them in my Life playlist.
A lot of what gets a lot of views is passing entertainment. I like a story from Matthew McConaughey's book. There was a guy in Africa who put it this way. Matthew asked him, "Why don't you go perform your music in the USA?" And he said, "Matthew, if I go to the USA, I will be dry shit. I will not stick with people. But when I perform my music in Africa and in France, I am wet shit. I stick with people. They remember me. It means something to them."
I'm really internalizing that. I want to be wet shit, so that what I share with you sticks with you, makes a difference to you, isn't just some silly cute little thing — "Oh, did you see what they did in their video?" — but hits you at a soul level. So that the next time you have a fight with your partner, or the next time you're alone and thinking about all the things you wish you'd said to a former partner, and you're in pain, you remember what I've said. And it helps you look within and see that you have a choice about how you are experiencing your reality now. Then you decide to create your reality differently, because you know you have a choice. If you had a choice, you wouldn't sit on the couch crying about how much you miss your last partner, once you've done enough of that. If you had a choice, you'd get excited about the next partner who's going to come along, and you'd prepare, and you'd enjoy the time you have alone before the new partner comes in.
I have had a fabulous day without my wife and kids around. It's been great to just have this alone time. You can see that it doesn't matter if there are people I'm "dry shit" for. Most of what you see out there is dry shit — it's not going to stick with you or make any difference in your life. You'll watch somebody play great in Call of Duty, but you're not going to adjust your view, or truly learn, or expand yourself much. With everything you do, you expand some. But once you see that, I am intent on making connections with those of you for whom what we do here really matters.
The more people who are not in that mindset, the more difficult it is for me to connect with you. Even here, you've seen some people who seem a bit out of sync with the wavelength we're thinking on, where what they say doesn't seem to match up with our reality. That's because they're tuned into a different frequency. They're tuned into what's wrong with the world, who's wrong, and who they can make wrong. They're here to point out things that are wrong and to bring some of that frequency here. If I set my intention that I want the most people to watch, I'm therefore setting the intention that I don't care about each of you individually that much.
Quality connection over big numbers
If I set the intention that I want to give you specifically the most I have to give, to those of you who are most open to receiving it, then I know the exact right number of you will show up. Anybody else who's not that magic number, that magic connection, doesn't matter. Some of the people who have made a big difference for me — like Eckhart Tolle, or Bill Wilson and Bob Smith who founded AA — got a lot of attention because of a big focus on making that quality connection and giving the most. Then, by law of attraction, all the people they've helped brought everybody else in. Invariably there get to be people dragged in — critics, people who bought books for them and didn't really like it. So there's a certain sacredness to just loving exactly where you are, whether it's thirty people watching or three hundred or three thousand or three or zero. If you can love where you're at, and be grateful and excited for what's coming, every single thing you truly need and want will be attracted to you almost effortlessly.
Now, from a physical point of view, there is work. I show up to do this every day. I don't sit on the couch all day imagining that one day I'm just going to sign on and all these great things will have come to me. I show up because I love doing it. It takes no motivation for me to do what I love to do. As you'll notice in your own life, if you love to do something, it takes no suggestion, no motivation, no inspiration to go do it. You do it because you love to do it.
Doing only what I love — even the DMV and the diapers
My whole life now is that I do every single thing I do because I love to do it. Even if it's something like going to the DMV — I love driving, so if I end up at the DMV to get my license renewed, I love doing the things I need to do to be able to drive. I love dumping my son's pee out of his potty, because I love being a parent and that supports my son. I love changing my son's diapers — though I prefer if he goes in the potty. I love helping out with even the things you might think of as undesirable tasks, because they're part of the things I love.
What you'll notice is that I've set the intention that if something is not on our frequency, I'll take whatever is useful and put that into the discussion, and simply disregard the rest. With a few of the comments here, I've essentially acknowledged that I noticed the comment, and put it in terms of where I'm attracting from, where I'm focused. I've avoided lowering myself or repositioning into a fighting stance. By fighting, you're actually acknowledging the validity of the other point of view, and you're actually reinforcing it. So by not fighting, I allow the other person's view to exist — I don't debate with it, and I also don't create more of it.
Some of us have the idea that we just have to show up and do what other people want us to do, even if we don't like it. We've been conditioned that way. I've found that's an ass-backwards way to go about it. The things I want to do are also naturally where I can help others the most. If I were just to show up and play war games — if I were playing Warzone today out of thinking that's what other people want — I'd be doing it believing that getting the most people to watch is the best way I can help. But I finally learned that the best way to help other people is to position myself to do what I love. From there, I have only love to give away. From there, I'm excited and enthusiastic to help.
You can't force anyone — not even into a good thing
Have you ever had somebody try to help you who wasn't happy about it? Often with our partners, we want them to do something, and they don't want to do it, and we badger and push them until they finally do it, but then they're kind of a pain in the ass about it. You can tell they don't want to do it. Say it was a vacation you really wanted to go on but they didn't, and you pressured them. Or, an even better example, one I've watched someone go through in real life: you want to have a baby, but your partner doesn't, and you keep pressuring and expecting "we're going to have this baby," and your partner is hesitant even to be honest that they don't want to, that they're not ready to be a parent. You just push and push. Then the baby comes, and next thing you know, you and your partner are getting divorced, and they're saying, "I didn't want to have that child to start with, and I don't want this life we have together now." You look back and ask, where did this go wrong? What do I learn from it?
You see that when you get somebody to do something they didn't really want to do, what you get out of it continues to be in that same spirit. That's why I find it essential that if I'm going to do something, I must find within me the genuine desire to do it — or not do it at all. For example, if my wife wants me to do something, I have a family member who says, "You just do whatever your wife wants." And honestly, if I just did whatever my wife wanted, I'd probably have a better marriage too. I love that, because from their point of view it looks like I just do whatever my wife wants. What they're actually seeing is that I find a way to do what my wife really wants done, or I don't do it — in which case my wife finds a way to be happy with me not doing it. We work together so that being in our marriage is a joy and a pleasure for both of us.
It's a dance. Each of us senses, telepathically, how much the other one wants to do something. "Okay, this is really important to me." If one of us gets that sense, the other figures out a way to find enthusiasm and be excited for it, and we respect the differences. For example, my wife suggested that I not go on this trip to Disney with the family this weekend, and I felt totally happy about that, because in the pictures of possibilities we created, we both could see — her first — that the way we'd collectively enjoy this weekend the best is if I stayed home and she went with her parents and the kids to Disney.
This book is a great example of something that encourages you to see that there's not any true separation between you and any other soul. Really, I'm talking to myself. You are me, and I am you. There's no boundary any of us can find that truly separates me from you. In the truest sense, I am teaching myself the things I'm talking about, which is why I find it so helpful and joyful. These are the things I'm learning and mastering.
That's why it's essential to put your energy where you want more of — to drop looking at the cons of a situation at all, and focus only on the pros, and make a decision based purely on the pros. That even helps when you have bad ideas. You might think, "Okay, Jerry, if I just focus on what's good and what I like, aren't I going to be a totally selfish jerk who doesn't consider anybody?" Ironically, you'll often appear the opposite.
The "selfish" self-care that gives you more to give
You might be surprised to hear me say I'm the most selfish I've ever been in my whole life. I am absolutely rigid and disciplined that I will have my own needs met. I will be true to myself, regardless of what other people want from me. I will take care of myself no matter what else is happening. I don't care how much help the kids need, how much attention people need online, how much money is needed for our house — I will make sure I am taken care of before even considering anything else.
Now you might look at that and say that is utter selfishness, that you ought to think about your wife and kids before yourself. Let me put it to you like this. Do my wife and kids want to deal with me when I'm hungry? Or would they prefer to deal with me when I have eaten appropriately? Would they prefer to have me around without me doing self-care, on edge and intense like I was before? Or would they rather do without me for a few hours every week while I go do yoga and a fitness class and sit in the ocean, and then come home all zen and happy to see them and able to enjoy our time together?
When you take care of yourself, you have much, much more to give. When you hurt yourself or ignore yourself and ignore your physical body, and you forget about who you really are, you have much less to give other people. It's so much more difficult for anybody else to take care of me than for me to take care of myself.
For example, my daughter at five and a half years old easily has the physical ability to wipe her own butt, and yet she still insists that we wipe it. At some point, either we're going to refuse to wipe her butt, or she will decide to wipe it herself. I kind of look at it like every time I wipe her butt, this could be the last time. It's one of those things that is kind of sacred — oh, she's still young enough for me to wipe her butt. Someday she'll be so old that the thought of her dad wiping her butt is hard for her to even hold in her head. And yet today, that's normal to her.
It's more difficult for both of us for me to wipe her butt instead of her just wiping it herself. Because every time she poops, she needs to consider whether mom, dad, grandma, grandpa, nana, or papa is available to wipe her butt. She has to plan her poops around who could wipe her butt. When she's at school for six hours a day, and in the car before and after, she can't poop, because there's nobody around to do it. That makes her life more difficult, and I choose, with joy — notice how I switched my words there, instead of saying "I have to," I said "I choose to with joy" — I choose with joy to stop washing the dishes, go grab a wipe, and wipe my daughter's butt, because I love being a parent and doing whatever it takes to be of service to her. You see how her not wiping her own butt collectively takes much more energy from both of us than if she just wiped it herself.
Now imagine your entire self-care is similar to wiping your own butt. When you put the work into feeling good yourself, other people will not need to make almost any effort at all for you to feel good. Have you seen people where one person just feels really down on themselves, and they therefore expect their partner to do everything to leave them feeling validated and understood, when really, if that person would love themselves, their partner wouldn't have to do almost anything to provide what they need? That's why it's a joy to be in a grown-up relationship where each grown-up is self-sufficient.
When you're capable of loving yourself while you're by yourself, you will almost instantly and easily attract a partner, because it's very attractive for someone to be able to love themselves. When you're struggling to love yourself and you desperately need someone else to love you, because you don't have it within you, ironically and rudely, it makes it difficult to attract any kind of partner except one who feels the same way. Then you have a super needy relationship where both of you depend totally on the other to give you what you could give yourself. That's why I love my marriage so much — because my wife is grounded and able to love and provide for herself, and so am I. We make a team, and we focus on helping each other. We don't need each other to feel good. We already feel good, and we enjoy feeling good together.
I'm grateful today that I am able to not fear losing my wife, or even my children, because I know that if that space was made, sure, I might lay on the floor and cry, I might experience a lot of grief — but I also know that space, as soon as I allowed it to be, would be filled by another form. From that comes true peace. If somebody in your life dies, they can continue to stay in touch with you, and you now have physical space for somebody else to fill their spot. Of course, when my dad passed, nobody else since has totally filled my dad's shoes.
I'm under no illusion that I'm "Saint Jerry"
I'm so grateful to have this to say to you today. Facebook brings up my posts from years ago — I've been on Facebook since 2005, so it brings up a lot of posts. A lot of my posts in the past are either me trying to talk myself into something good that I'm struggling to realize in my own life, or me complaining about something. I just read a post in my memories complaining about something that really didn't affect me at all. I was just finding something to complain about. And I have such love and understanding for myself.
I appreciate that reminder, to be under no illusion that I'm Saint Jerry or something. By law of attraction, I could think myself into a very dark place — this could be the last live stream that's like this. I realize my power to create anything I think about, and that's a big responsibility. Our children have that power at any age. Even infants have the same power to create. In fact, they may be more attuned with it.
Taking care of myself is what makes me considerate
I'm feeling like it's about time to wrap this up. My wife said one of the biggest love languages for her is to be thought about — to think about what she's going to need in advance. What she's going to need is for me to be available when she comes home. She's about an hour away right now.
What's beautiful is that the more disciplined I am about demanding and expecting that I will first and foremost take care of myself, the more considerate it actually makes me. Yes, we do need to help each other in this life. When I'm taken care of, then I've got the space to think about my wife and ask, what is Laura going to need when she gets home after being at Disney with the kids? How is she going to need to take care of herself? She's willing to self-sacrifice. She's willing to let me not consider her. And I'm not willing to do that today. I think about it, and if I'm unclear, I ask. When she comes home, what she'll probably want to do is take a nap. So as soon as she gets home, I need to be available, ready to hang out with the kids, so she can get her rest. Her naps are one of her main forms of self-care, and then she's ready to be in a better mood, and all of us feel better.
Whereas if I'm not taking care of myself, I'm also not paying as much attention to what other people need to do to take care of themselves. Since I take such consistent care of myself, I also look at the people in my life — and while I was talking about this, I saw the opportunity to do that even more with my children. While I'm very thoughtful of my wife, there's an opportunity to consider what my kids need. They're usually very open and vocal about it, but my daughter's getting old enough to start being more like an adult and putting her own needs aside, even when that's not best for anybody. So I want to start thinking, what does my daughter need to be at her best today?
The irony is, the more you think about taking truly good care of yourself, the more easily you will consider the needs of those around you, and feel great joy in adjusting what you're doing to help them get what they need. I might resent my wife if I felt like I was not taking care of myself deeply — I might resent her for expecting that I drop stuff out of my busy, important schedule so she can take a nap in the middle of the day when she's been on vacation. Just saying that sounded kind of nasty, didn't it? I don't think that way, because I don't want to feel that way. Every single thing I say impacts how I feel.
So I am so grateful for our time together today. I love listening to audio, which is one reason I consistently talk about books — I'm often listening to audiobooks like Seth Speaks, which is the main motivation for this discussion, at least externally. If anything here resonated with you, you're warmly welcome to keep the conversation going with me and everyone else in the Jerry Banfield Family. Thank you for a great chat about Seth Speaks today.