“Seth material” search engine (Jane Roberts)

(Pause.) Your impulses are your closest communication with your inner self, because in the waking state they are the spontaneous urgings toward action, rising from that deep inner knowledge of yourself that you have in dreams. (Intently:) You were born because you had the impulse to be. The universe exists because it had the impulse to be. There was no exterior cosmic Pied Piper, singing magical notes or playing a magical tune, urging the universe into being. The urge to be came from within, and that urge is repeated to some extent in each impulse, each urge toward action on the part of man or molecule. If you do not trust the nature of your impulses, then you do not trust the nature of your life, the nature of the universe, or the nature of your own being.

(10:01.) Any animal knows better than to distrust the nature of its own life, and so does any infant. Nature exists by virtue of faith. The squirrels gather nuts in the faith that they will have provisions, in the faith that the next season will come, and that spring will follow winter. Your impulses are immersed in the quality called faith, for they urge you into action in the faith [that] the moment for action exists. Your beliefs must interact with your impulses, however, and often they can erode that great natural beneficial spontaneity that impulses can provide.

(Pause.) When I speak of impulses, many of you will automatically think of impulses that appear contradictory or dangerous or “evil” — and that is because you are so convinced of the basic unworthiness of your being. You have every right to question your impulses, to choose among them, to assess them, but you must be aware of them, acknowledge their existence, for they will lead you to your own true nature. This may involve a lengthy journey for some of you, with your belief systems, for many of your impulses now are the result of the pressure caused by perfectly normal unacknowledged ones in the past. But your impulses reflect the basic impulse of your life. Even if they appear contradictory at any given time, overall they will be seen to form constructive patterns toward action that point more clearly towards your own clear path for fulfillment and development.

Such action serves as a safeguard so that you do not overemphasize the gaps that may exist in yourself or in society, between the reality and the ideal condition. Many people want to change the world for the better, but that ideal seems so awe-inspiring that they think they can make no headway unless they perform some great acts of daring or heroism, or envision themselves in some political or religious place of power, or promote an uprising or rebellion. The ideal seems so remote and unreachable that, again, sometimes any means, however reprehensible, eventually can seem justified (see Session 850, for example). To change the world for the better, you must begin by changing your own life. There is no other way.