“Seth material” search engine (Jane Roberts)

Now, when you spoke of your friend last time, I told you to distrust easy answers. And in a way, I am not kind to you, for I would have you question before you are ready to question. It is easy to take the advice of others. It is easy to look outward and accept an authority. And there is no authority but the authority that is within your own consciousness—the legitimate reality that is your own!

Why should another man know better than you what is within your own consciousness? With what power do you invest him that he should know better than you the feelings that are within your own heart? And why do you find it so difficult to realize what those feelings are?

Now, I have said this before: On the physical level, your problem is to find a position. You have done very well lately in meeting your appointments, and this is definitely an advance. On the psychological level, you need to know why the relationship between you and your wife continued as it was for so many years. Most of all you need to know yourself as an individual, with your good points and your failings. But, as long as you continually look to others for advice, you deny your own abilities.

([Brad:] “Will the pendulum give me access to my own resources?”)

I want you, in other words, to make tangible evidence of your own good points and accomplishments, so that when you are lost in periods of depression and negative thinking there will be something that you can look at. And you can say, “I am a person with good points and accomplishments, and here they are listed for me.” It will stop you from tearing yourself down from morning to night. This seems like a very simple suggestion, and yet it is a very valuable one.

It does indeed. It means that you use your strengths however; it means not only that you refuse to be a doormat, but that you accept yourself as a worthy personality, willing to give and to take, willing even to be used at times as you use, but not willing to be a doormat. It means that you must accept your worth and also the responsibility for it. It means that you say, “I come to this marriage as an individual, willing to give and take, with my own good points and failings—but, I do not come to this marriage as a worthless individual willing to take from you whatever you are willing to take and to give. But you must know yourself to do this, and you must be willing to look into yourself.

You are endowing her with what you imagine to be highly efficient masculine qualities. You are endowing yourself with what you imagine to be feminine qualities. Now the human being is a gestalt of perception. There are no qualities as such that are masculine or feminine. You are knocking down those abilities that are your own because you conceive of them as feminine. And in your mind you are setting Margo up as highly efficient because she has those abilities that you think should be your own because you think that they are masculine qualities. So you are allowing yourself to behave in what you imagine to be a subservient, feminine behavior. Now this is all a result of your own attitude, and she has reacted to that attitude, and reinforced it, because she wants to be dominant. One portion of her wants to be dominant; the other portion looks to you as a man, and there you fail her, because you refuse to assert the independence that is your nature. It seems to contradict your artistic nature and there is no contradiction. The contradiction only exists in your mind. She looks to you for direction and you do not give it, and therefore—if all within this room will excuse me—she turns into a bitch.

Now you must forget such ideas—that a male has certain abilities and a female has certain abilities. You must realize your worth as an individual and her worth as an individual. You have allowed her, in the past, to take full control of your life and destiny, and this no individual can do. For your destiny is within your own hands.

You will learn that you are a part of the webwork of consciousness. You will learn to be conscious cocreators. You will learn, or you will destroy the planet which you now inhabit! And if you do, your consciousness will begin in another reality. You will learn to recognize within yourselves the joy and the true reality of being. You will learn to distinguish between the reality of joy and pseudorealities that you have created, or you will begin again. But you will learn. You are indeed as blessed as any god and as gifted. When you learn to honor yourselves, you will be free. And you will create with joy and spontaneity when you recognize that within the leaf of a flower the consciousness that is within it, and relate it to yourself, and honor it and treat it as a little brother, you will be free.

You must learn what it is like to be male and female, to be parent and child. And you will go through the cycles until you can relate with others. And if you cannot understand them from your own viewpoint, then you will become them. And from their viewpoint you will see yourselves. This is the meaning of learning. You will extend your consciousness, as you know it, from the self that you know outward and relate to others and understand them. Or you will take their positions and from their consciousness observe the selves that no longer exist in your time. But you will learn.

Within you is the elemental and vital consciousness that gives birth to all realities. You can feel this within you when you turn your backs upon the roles that you presently play. Then you can learn the meaning of those roles, for there is meaning in them. And there is no reason why it must escape you.

(To Theodore.) The impetus of your emotional affection for a... consciousness to that of your son’s aboard the ship—that is the meaning of reality and consciousness. And it cannot be taken away from you. You learned to do that.

The atoms and molecules within a cloud create the cloud; the atoms and molecules within your body create your body. And you within the body create the world that you know. The realization is there anytime you are ready to admit it. You are ready my dear friend... and dragging your feet (to Theodore), you are ready to travel farther in your Great Hall and it is about time you did so.

Reality and consciousness are in the state, always, of becoming. God himself, in your terms, is in a state of becoming. A state of completion would be an end, and the end of all realities. Therefore, at no particular point is your entity, your inner self, done and completed.

Let me emphasize again that in any terms of which you can conceive of a god, such a god is not static. And as soon as you say, “God is this” or “God is that,” God is already something more. And as soon as you say, “My entity is this,” or “My entity is that,” it is already something more. You cannot keep track of your own thoughts. Why do you think you can keep track of your entity or of a god? Even your thoughts are created and they affect realities of which you do not know. Your thoughts have electromagnetic realities in dimensions that you do not even perceive. Your dreams are realities in dimensions that you do not now perceive. Your entities have realities and dimensions that you do not perceive. The gods not only have surprises for you, but you have surprises for the gods and it can be no other way.

You are already a part of All That Is, and you cannot disentangle yourself from that reality. There is no nirvana if you mean by nirvana a state in which your individuality is lost and gobbled in a great fish of a god that consumes you as the whale consumed Jonah.

Again, however, remember: The knowledge within yourselves is not sober, it is joyful; and that the energy that comes through this frail frame is also available to each of you, in your own way. You have access to it. And you can use it.

Now here we have a fine and substantial figure (Brad). If this much energy can come through this small frame, then why do you not use the energy that is available through your own.

And I still enjoy childlike games. I do not skip a rope or dance through the hula but I amuse myself with thoughts and games that you have long forgotten. And in the ancient nature of my mind, there is still the childlike early wonder about the nature of reality. And if you all wonder who you are and the nature of your reality, then I still astound and surprise myself with my own wonderings for there is much that I do not know.

(To Laurie:) Now you paint pictures. Paint pictures from your hopes and not from your fears. Form reality from your dreams and not from your terrors.

Now in bidding you all good evening, again I encourage you to find within yourself the source of your own energy and consciousness and strength and to let it sing within you as a vitality of your being. And do not cower and do not cry, but sing in pure joy that your consciousness knows itself and that even in your ignorance you create and give joy to others. And know that there is no end to your consciousness or to the reality of which you are a part.