“Seth material” search engine (Jane Roberts)

It was not particularly good advice. Your friend (Dr. Holloway) did not mention the most important point of all. He did not ask you to question yourself. He did not ask you to look into yourself, and to discover those reasons why you had put up with that situation for so many years. He did not ask you to discover what needs within you were being satisfied in your marriage, anymore, my dear friend, than you asked yourself why you brought the tape to class this evening.

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?

It would be easy for me to tell you what you should do.

Through the pendulum, you can gain access to your subconscious knowledge, to your motivations. But through negative thinking, you will undo what you learn.

Now I will tell you something to do. I will give you some advice to follow. And it is very simple. This is what I want you to do: I want you to make a list of your good points, of your abilities. I want to see this in black and white. I want you to take some care in making up the list. I want you to put it in front of you and look at it three times a day.

Now, I asked our friend to question himself to discover why he felt it necessary to continue the relationship, and what emotional needs were being met. I did not imply that the needs were necessary, only that he felt they were and that he should discover the reasons why he felt these needs were necessary. I did not imply that the needs were necessary or unnecessary.

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.

And I have told you before, there are no accidents! No man is sent accidentally, and innocently, off to war. He who kills must learn what killing is by being the victim. You will learn that you cannot buy peace through violence. You will learn it. You will learn not only that human life is sacred, but that the life within each molecule and atom is sacred.

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.

The answers come to you when you play at being yourself. Play that game now and then. Play at being yourself; you will be surprised at what you discover. And you, my dear Lady of Florence, will be the most surprised of all.

And then what a hue and cry you will set up against your elders. And how you will protest that the elder generation has ruined the world.

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.

Now, you have been what would now seem to you to be chaotic energy—forming universes. You have drifted through interstellar space, not knowing yourself. You have traveled for eons without attaining the knowledge of your identity. You have traveled without knowing who or what you were as elemental particles of consciousness. You have gathered your strength and individuality. You have learned to handle energy. You have added to your consciousness. You have become more aware. You have learned to some extent, some small extent to this time, the responsibility of creativity. You are evolving. Each of you is evolving the forms by which you will manifest yourself. You have come a long way from undifferentiated chaos, in your present terms, to what you are. Notice, I did not say you came from undifferentiated chaos, but what you would now regard as that.

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.

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.

Creativity is always discontent—and always about new surprises. Therefore, the entity itself is never completed. You are learning to be conscious cocreators. But you do not always know what the creation, in your terms, will be.

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.

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.