“Seth material” search engine (Jane Roberts)

Such tales are myths. They do indeed have power and strength. In those terms they represent the darker side of myths, however — yet through their casts you presently view your world. You will interpret the private events of your lives, and the spectacular range of history, in the light of those assumptions about reality. They not only color your experience, but you create those events that more or less conform to those assumptions.

(10:19.) The myths upon which you base your lives so program your existence that often you verbally deny what you inwardly know. When people are hurt in a natural disaster, for example, they will often profess to have no idea at all for such involvement. They will ignore or deny the inner feelings that alone would give the event any meaning in their lives. The reasons for such involvement would be endless, or course — all valid, yet in each and every case, man and nature in those terms would meet in an encounter that had meaning, from the largest global effects to the smallest, most private aspects of the individuals involved. You have made certain divisions because of your myths, of course, that make this kind of explanation extremely important and difficult. You think of rain or earthquakes as natural events, for example, while you do not consider thoughts or emotions as natural events in the same terms. Therefore it is difficult for you to see how there can be any valid interactions between, say, emotional states and physical ones.

You might say: “Of course, I realize that the weather affects my mood,” yet it will occur to very few of you that your moods have any effect upon the weather. You have so concentrated upon the categorization, delineation, and exploration of the objective world that it surely seems to be “the only real one.” It seems to exert force or pressure against you, or to impinge upon you, or at least almost to happen by itself, so that you sometimes feel powerless against it. Your myths have given great energy to the outsideness of things.

This myth finds great value in the larger processes of nature in general, and yet sees man alone as the villain of an otherwise edifying tale. A true identification with nature, however, would show glimpses of man’s place in the context of his physical planet, and would bring to the forefront accomplishments that he has achieved almost without his knowing.

Objectively — whatever the appearances — storms, earthquakes, floods, et cetera, are quite necessary to the well-being of the earth. Both man’s and nature’s purposes are served, then, though generally speaking man’s myths make him blind to those interactions. People’s thoughts and emotions always give clear clues whenever illness is involved, yet most people ignore such information. They censor their own thoughts. Many therefore “fall prey” to epidemics of one kind or another because they want to, though they might deny this quite vigorously.