“Seth material” search engine (Jane Roberts)

The dream served several purposes. It allowed him to release aggression in a much less violent manner than he would have in the past. It also, however, allowed him to see the picture of his own aggression as it existed on a subconscious level of his mind. The aggression that he feared was not so great and big and powerful and black and hairy and threatening as he thought. Instead, it was a part of himself and very small, fish size, you see, and easy to squash and kick. It was not this giant that you feared, and it was easy to rid yourself of this. Now, in this case, the fish was not a probable fish in another reality. It was a portion, however, of his own energy.

([Joel:] “We appear quite vulnerable though. I was thinking of the fish again. When you say the lilies of the field may, lose a leaf or two, but still have a great deal of protection, I was wondering had Ned’s fish, perhaps. In his case it was only an image, but in my case, suppose I had a probable fish. Now what kind of protection would that fish have had against my violent acts?”)

Now, in the first place, there are several things you must understand. Some of these things you can misinterpret, and so I go lightly in class with them because some of you are not ready to understand them as yet. You hear the words and yet you do not understand what they really mean, but basically, you do violence to no one. Basically, you cannot hurt anything, but as long as you think that you can, then you must dwell within that reality. Now, in that reality, as you understand it now, there are reasons that you do not as yet perceive. I am not saying that you cannot perceive them, I am saying that you do not perceive them. No one, therefore, could hurt our friend’s fish, even if it were a live one, in your terms. And there are interconnections between you that you do not understand and that can be misinterpreted and these, also, I go lightly with in class and for the same reasons.

Therefore, no thing, in your terms, is hurt. However, in your frame of reference, no thing, in your terms, is hurt without giving acceptance to the hurt; without attracting it and without bringing it to itself, for within your frame of reference you form your own reality.

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.

Indeed, it is a good analogy and different animals, you see, have taken different paths of evolution. All of those species, for example, that seem to have passed out of existence, within your level of reality, in other probabilities have continued to exist and develop. The dinosaurs have gone their way.

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.

There is a sacrament here that you do not understand, and when you gobble down food indiscriminately, and when you do not give silent recognition to the fact that what you eat once lived, then you lose contact with a certain sacred heritage and deny yourself a certain part of a cycle in which you rightly, as physical creatures and as spiritual creatures, have a part.

([Garrett:] “In what way do they have to deal with it?”)

I told him to give up cigarettes a long time ago, but it is his mark of independence that he is not letting any spirit tell him what to do.

If you will forgive me for the analogy, imagine that your present self is like a suit of clothing that you have put on, and when you are looking for the nature of reality, imagine that you take this suit of clothing off in the same way that a child discards its clothing before playing in the water in the springtime. The self that you put by will be there when you return, no one will steal it. Then let yourselves go and be joyful.