“Seth material” search engine (Jane Roberts)

The meaning behind and the object lesson to be learned. Now, give us a moment. Each individual life, all life, has its own built-in mechanisms against danger.

Now, the point that our friend over here (Sue) was trying to make earlier is related, to some extent, along these lines in that you can become so afraid of violence that you overemphasize its effect. And if you will excuse me, in so doing you are taking on the guise of the devil. It is the same thing you see, as projecting upon a hypothetical devil all kinds of powers of destruction. You can do the same thing without realizing it by projecting into the idea of violence, all powers, and then it seems to you that life itself has no ability to protect itself and that any stray thought of violence or disaster will immediately zoom home and that the recipient has no way to protect himself. If this were the case your race would not have lasted out one day.

Now when I talk to him I am always drawn back to the lilies of the field. Your poor little innocent flower, when it rains and thunders and storms come, does our little flower look up and say, “Here comes that evil lightening and thunder?” It does not think that the thunder and the lightening and the wind and the rain are out to get it. It realizes that the strength and vitality of life is as much in lightening and thunder and the storm as in the sunshine. And it has the sense to realize that it needs the rain, even though the rain that comes down may rip off a couple of its leaves. You have much more protection than you realize.

Now, not only human beings form their own reality, but all consciousness forms its own reality. Now, to fill out what I say, your own personal experience must come. You will understand what I say when the inner self is ready to understand, and I am not speaking in intellectual terms. The answers are within you and even when I speak those words that I have spoken many times, they are simply words until from within you comes the experience that gives them life.

Violence, in your level, is the other face of creativity, but you do not realize it and it is you who have set up the separation. All life, in certain respects, involves what you call violence. Breath is a violence, it is simply where you draw the line. All living is a thrusting out toward, and joyful thrusting out toward, the energy that you have not learned, as yet, to use creatively, you call violence. It has great potentials for creativity, and it is up to you now to learn how to use it creatively for it is another face of creativity.

They were so on the outlook for violence that their entire system of communication was built upon fear, for they could not protect themselves, they could only run. They did not face the issue of creative energy and how to use it. They blocked the energy off at the source. To put a hole into the earth is violent. To pluck up a flower from the earth is violent. To yell out into the air, as I am doing, does a violence to the atoms and molecules. Your blood rushing through your body does violence to it then. Learn what energy and life is, and then you will use it creatively and you will not fear it.

This does not mean I am saying kill, kill, kill. You do not understand the holy and sacred nature of life or energy and that you cannot misuse it. You may think you misuse it, but you are not allowed to misuse it. You are not allowed to destroy. While you live with these things you must deal with them and bear their consequences. If you kill, and believe that you kill, you will bear those consequences at this level of your development, but to think that you can destroy a consciousness would make the gods laugh. You cannot destroy one flower seed, much less a man.

The cannibals, in one way, were far more discerning, far more religious, and far more sacred in their attitude than many of you here in this room. They ate, for example, both human beings and animals, but they did not eat indiscriminately, nor did they eat without a knowledge of what they did. They realized that their life was a portion of all this life. They were at one level, and you are at another level. But at their level, and in their level of experience, they partook of the sacrament of life as they ate those things that they slayed. They gave thanks to the body that they consumed. They hastened the spirit that had been in the body on its way with thanks. They prayed that their hearts would be as strong and brave as the hearts that they devoured. Many of them, in their own environment, knew that those who were not eaten by them, for example other warriors, would die of hunger in any case. They ate them, therefore, also with thanksgiving and joy.