“Seth material” search engine (Jane Roberts)

I have told our Dean that spontaneity knows its own discipline. Your nervous system knows how to react. It reacts spontaneously when you allow it to do so. And the clouds flow through the thick skull easily. Now when you attempt to hold them back, it is then that they collect—and the electric charges grow—and the storm clouds grow.

However, with this talk of discipline and spontaneity my intention has somewhat changed. For I must tell you again, and I cannot tell you too often, that the inner self, acting spontaneously, automatically shows the discipline that you do not as yet understand. You are not your physical body. You are not your emotions. You have emotions as you have bacon for breakfast. You are not the bacon—and you are not your emotions. You have thoughts as you have eggs for breakfast. You are not the eggs and you are not your thoughts. You are as independent of your thoughts and your emotions as you are of the bacon and the eggs. You use the bacon and the eggs in your physical composition; and you use your emotions and your thoughts in your mental composition. Surely all of you consider yourselves somewhat superior to a piece of bacon, and you do not identify with it. Then, do not identify with your emotions or your thoughts. They flow through you. You attract them in the same way you go to the store to buy your bacon. But the bacon goes through your physical system and the thoughts of emotion, left alone, will pass through your psychic system. And you are independent of them. When you set up barriers and doors, then you enclose these thoughts within you—as if you stored up tons of bacon in your refrigerator and wonder why there was not enough room for anything else.

Now I ask you—how far do you think a flower would get if, in the morning, it turned its face toward the sky and said, “I demand the sun?” “And now I need rain. So I demand the rain! And I need bees to come and take my pollen. So I demand the bees!” And who would it ask for these things? And it would say, our imaginary flower, “I demand discipline! I demand therefore the sun shall shine for a certain amount of hours; the rain shall pour for a certain amount of hours; and the bees shall come—bee A, C, D, E and F—and I shall accept no other bees to come. And I demand that, furthermore, that discipline operate and that the soil shall follow my command, but I do not allow the soil any spontaneity of its own—and I do not allow the sun any spontaneity of its own—and I do not agree that the sun knows what it is doing. I demand it follow my ideas of discipline!”

And who, I ask you, would listen? For in the miraculous spontaneity of the sun, there is a discipline that utterly escapes you—and a knowledge that is beyond any knowledge that we know. And in the spontaneous playing of the bees from flower to flower there is a discipline beyond any that you know, and the laws that follow their own knowledge—and joy that is beyond command. For the true discipline, you see, is found only in spontaneity. Spontaneity knows its own order, and in the spontaneous expression of each spirit—you find what you consider discipline—and there is no other.

In the spontaneous working of your nervous system, what do we find? We see here the head of the Dean that rests upon his shoulders and the intellect that demands discipline. And yet all of this rests upon the spontaneous workings of the inner self and the nervous system of which the intellect knows little. And without that spontaneous discipline, there would be no ego to sit upon the shoulders and demand discipline.

Now. My Dean, the spontaneous self that you so fear is the self that speaks to Bega. Then it is not a self that you have to fear. You are highly confused as to the meaning of spontaneity and discipline. Now the seasons come each year as they have come for centuries upon your planet—and they come with a magnificent spontaneity and with a creativity that bursts upon the world. And yet they come in your system within a highly ritualized and disciplined manner. And spring does not come in December. And there is a merging of spontaneity and discipline—truly marvelous to behold. And you do not fear the coming of the seasons.

Now all of you—each in your own way—contribute. For you can consider the body of the earth and all that you know—the trees and the seasons and the sky—to some extent as your own contribution—the combination of spontaneity and discipline that gives fruit to the earth.