“Seth material” search engine (Jane Roberts)

Love perceives the grace in another. Like natural guilt, the state of grace is unconscious in the animals. It is protected. They take it for granted, not knowing what it is or what they do, yet it speaks through all their motions and they dwell in the ancient wisdom of its ways. They do not have conscious memory, again, but the instinctive memory of the cells and organs sustains them. All of this applies in degrees according to the species, and when I speak of conscious memory I am using words that are familiar to you — I mean a memory that can at any time look back through itself.

The splendid biological acceptance of life could not be thrust or forced upon his emerging consciousness, so to be effective, efficient, to emerge in the new focus of awareness, grace had to expand from the life of the tissue to that of the feelings, thoughts and mental processes. Grace became the handmaiden of natural guilt, then.

The simplicity of natural guilt does not lead to what you think of as conscience, yet conscience is also dependent upon that moment of reflection that in a large measure sets you apart from the animals. Conscience, as you think of it, is caused by a dilemma and a misunderstanding of the conditions set upon your physical existence. Conscience arose with the emergence of artificial guilt. Give us a moment…

Now: Artificial guilt is still highly creative in its way, an offshoot made in man’s image as his conscious mind began to consider and play upon the natural innocent guilt that originally implied no punishment.

The conscious mind is endlessly creative. This applies to all areas of conscious-mind thinking. It is also the organizer of physical data, so natural guilt became the basis for all kinds of variations. These closely followed man’s religious and social groupings. The latter are also the result of the aware mind’s capacity to play upon, mix and merge, and rearrange perception and experience.

(Pause at 10:34.) The animal has no such need. It nestles safely within the confines of its instincts while exploring other aspects of awareness with which man is not so intimately familiar. Yet natural grace and natural guilt are given you, and these will also grow more fully into conscious awareness. If you can sit quietly and realize that your body parts are replacing themselves constantly — if you turn your conscious mind into the consideration of such activity — then you can realize your own state of grace. If you can sense your thoughts steadily replacing themselves then you can also feel your own elegance.

You cannot feel guilty and enjoy such recognition, however; not on a conscious level. If you find that you are berating yourself because of something you did yesterday, or ten years ago, you are not being virtuous. You are most likely involved with artificial guilt. Even if a violation occurred, natural guilt does not involve penance. It is meant as a precautionary measure, a reminder before an event.

You seem to think that there is an expanse of time between reincarnational existences, that one follows the other as one moment seems to follow another. Because you perceive a reality of cause and effect, you hypothesize a reality in which one life affects the next one. With your theories of guilt and punishment you often imagine that you are hampered in this existence by guilts collected in the last life — or worse, accumulated through the centuries.

Close your eyes. Think of your breaths as lives, and you the entity through which they have passed and are passing. Then you will feel your state of grace, and all artificial guilts will be meaningless. None of this negates the supreme and utter integrity of your individuality, for you are as well the individual entity through whom the lives flow, and the unique lives that are expressed through you.