“Seth material” search engine (Jane Roberts)

I am being maligned. I have spoken to our Lady of Florence over here many times and you could have explained to our new student what I mean. I should be quiet and let you do so. You do indeed choose your own environment and your own life circumstances. And before this life you have already set those challenges that you will meet. But you also are endowed with free will and there is no punishment except [for] those of you who choose to punish yourselves. There is no punishment in those terms. You grow in understanding, and if you kill, then it is necessary that you learn what it means to be a victim and so you become a victim if you choose. You may indeed learn what it is to be a victim in other ways. You must learn how to use the consciousness that is yourself.

You will find All That Is also within a leaf and within a flower. But only when you try to understand what a leaf and a flower are. If you believe that a leaf is a piece of physical matter without consciousness, without glory, then you will learn nothing from it. But if you realize that a leaf is a portion of All That Is then you will realize what communion is.

There is nothing that is not blessed, nothing that is not filled with All That Is from which it achieves its existence, its energy, its consciousness and its strength. When you attempt to objectify All That Is into the nature of a God that exists somewhere outside you, then it seems to you that you must reach outward when instead you must listen inwardly.

If it were not for these energies you would not have children; if it were not for these energies you would not be alive. You worry and all of you worry at one time or another about that which you do not know consciously. Yet you do not know consciously how you breathe and if you did you would be dead, because you could not consciously handle the millions of manipulations that must take place in order to assure one breath. These are the energies of which you speak. These are the energies that allow you to sit as you do upright in the chair when you do not consciously know how your muscles hold you up; and when you begin to speak you do not know consciously with what word your sentence will end; nor do you consciously know how you speak nor indeed from where the thought comes.

The joy that All That Is rings through every consciousness that lives. It rings through your wineglass. It rings through the atoms and molecules of the table. Why then do you think it does not ring through your own body? And through the inner selves that you try so hard to hide?

There are indeed. Both in this reality and others. Ruburt, though he does not know this yet consciously, is also in another class in another dimension of reality—for I teach him while he is asleep. He does not talk back that way.

A service. Now this is too complicated to handle in an evening. However, since I have nowhere made any statement on such a weighty problem, I shall here do so for the statements are needed regardless of humor. Simply on a physical level the animals have sometimes more sense than you do. They listen to the inner voice, and they do not overproduce. They set up safeguards that are automatic and instinctive. Any true evolution of your species as such is dependent on evolution of consciousness and spirituality. If your world is overpopulated, you can reduce yourselves to a state of consciousness that existed, in your terms, eons ago from which you would then again have to learn to emerge. Only certain persons are tempted to return when the world is over-populated. They are not stable. They are persons who returned too soon. They are then already erratic.

You are not to dominate the planet. You are not to dominate the species upon the planet. You are not to use the earth for your own purposes. You were not set in domination over the animals. You are to cooperate with all life and all life is a part of All That Is and every animal has consciousness and you will realize this or you will destroy your planet.

The atoms and molecules within your bodies and the consciousness within them have dwelt as flowers in the field. The actual atoms and molecules that are within your arm at this moment have been within the cows that you have eaten and the flowers upon which you now walk. The air that you now breathe in this moment has come from cosmic dust down through the universe to this room. You are not alone. You will learn the sacredness of consciousness. You will learn to be responsible for life. You will learn to protect and cherish life as you know it and the plant life as you know it.

You will learn that it is cruel to bring into existence new consciousness when your planet cannot support it. For your planet will not be able to support it and spiritual growth cannot be achieved through starving bodies nor through the agonies of mothers who must watch their children starve. (Nigerian civil war at this time.)

Now many of these matters do not concern you. You are well-dressed and well-fed. But many men and women are indeed starving. You cannot consume your planet. You will not be allowed to consume your planet. Free will is yours, however, and if you decide to ignore these inner realities you can destroy your planet and it will do you no good to cry to a God, for the God would not have destroyed your planet. You will have done so because you do not realize the sacred nature of consciousness.