“Seth material” search engine (Jane Roberts)

The motive power of the universe and of each particle or wave or person within it is the magnificent thrust toward creative probabilities, and the tension that exists, the exuberant tension, that exists “between” probable choices and probable events. This applies to men and molecules, and to all of those hypothetically theorized smaller divisions with which scientists like to amaze themselves. Divisions or units.

I am not speaking of anything (pause) like “repression,” as it is used by psychologists, but a far deeper issue: one in which the very self is so distrusted that natural impulses of any kind become suspect. You try to inoculate yourselves against yourselves — a nearly impossible situation, of course. You expect your motives to be selfish because you have been told that they are, and so when you catch yourselves with unkind motives you are almost comforted, because you think that at least you are behaving normally.

When you find yourself with good motives, you distrust them. “Surely,” you think, “beneath this seeming altruism, there must indeed be some nefarious, or at best selfish, motives that escape me.” As a people you are always examining your impulses, and yet you rarely examine the fruits of your intellects.

According to conditions, such a person could be a member of a small cult or the head of a nation, a criminal or a national hero, who claims to act with the authority of God. Again, the desire and motivation to act is so strong within each person that it will not be denied, and when it is denied then it can be expressed in a perverted form. Man must not only act, but he must act constructively, and he must feel that he acts for good ends.