“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 it seems to you that you are powerless, it is because you are denying the authority that lies within yourself, closing our mind to the answers that are as free as air. When you do not believe that the answers are within you, you cannot act upon them.

You may be a follower, and there are many followers, and it is necessary at times to follow. But in important ways, follow the wisdom that is within yourself.

You must first of all realize that within you there is somewhere the miraculous knowledge that keeps your body alive and operating. This portion of yourself, despite all your problems, keeps you alive as a physical organism. Its knowledge is beyond the wisdom of any man or woman alive! If that portion of yourself can make all the scientific and biological deductions necessary to maintain your physical organism, then indeed it has the abilities to solve these other problems. When you fully realize this, and you can if you remind yourself of it often enough, you can draw upon this knowledge to solve your problems. If you accept answers from others, you will simply run into the same problem again and again, and you will have solved nothing.

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.

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 must not change in order to get her back; you must change to get yourself back, but a new self. You must change to realize the self that you are.

You want yourself back. Now. You think that Margo is extremely competent in those areas where you are not competent. She has kept her job through the years while you have not.

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.

You will learn that consciousness is sacred. And until you learn that truth, you will not be free. You cannot kill another man, you cannot kill another woman and be free. You cannot even eat the meat of a cow, not nonchalantly. Not without thanking the cow for the food and the nourishment which it has given you, not without realizing that the cow, like yourself, is a part of the chain of life without which physically you would not exist and be free.

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.

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.

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.

Now. You carry the burden and the responsibility of that individuality—the burden and the responsibility. And within you, you see, is a portion of All That Is that can express itself uniquely only through those capabilities and potentialities that are yours. And if you deny them, then you deny God his voice to that degree. You deny a potentiality that you and no one else can fulfill. And this does not only apply to the individuality as you know it in this life, but to the energy that is yours that can never be withdrawn in whatever form you find yourself. The memories that are yours now are electromagnetically a part of you; and when your physical form is gone, this remains and you build upon it.

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.