“Seth material” search engine (Jane Roberts)

In your society, it is generally thought that a person must have a decent livelihood, a family or other close relationships, good health, and a sense of belonging if the individual is to be at all productive, happy, or content.

Animals also dramatize. They possess emotions. They feel a part of the drama of the seasons. They are fully alive, in those terms. Nature in all of its varieties is so richly encountered by the animals that it becomes their equivalent of your structures of culture and civilization. They respond to its rich nuances in ways impossible to describe, so that their “civilizations” are built up through the interweavings of sense data that you cannot possibly perceive.

They know, the animals, in a way that you cannot, that their private existences have a direct impact upon the nature of reality. They are engaged, then. An individual can possess wealth and health, can enjoy satisfying relationships, and even fulfilling work, and yet live a life devoid of the kind of drama of which I speak — for unless you feel that life itself has meaning, then each life must necessarily seem meaningless, and all love and beauty end only in decay.