“Seth material” search engine (Jane Roberts)

In animals natural aggression is used with the greatest biological integrity. It is on the one hand ritualized, and on the other hand perfectly spontaneous. Its signals are understood. The various degrees, postures, and indications of natural animal aggressiveness are all steps in a series of communications in which the animal encounters are made clear.

As a rule the animals have better sense. Your mind and your body, therefore, are quite equipped to handle aggression. Violence occurs only when the natural expression of aggression has been short-circuited. The sense of power felt during such episodes is the result of repressed energy suddenly released, but the individual is always at the mercy of that energy then — submerged within it, and passively carried with it.

(10:52. Jane had been “way out … I think we’re going to get more on animals and aggression … Boy, Seth’s still here. I just got the next sentence,” she laughed, but my writing hand was lame so I asked her to wait. “It’s funny,” she added, “but part of me is already into the session while the rest is still here on break….” Resume in the same manner at 11:05.)

Now: Because you have conscious minds you have great leeway in the manner in which you can express aggression, but the animals’ heritage is still retained in its own way. A frown is a natural method of communication, saying, “You have upset me,” or, “I am upset.” If you tell yourself to smile when you feel like scowling, then you are tampering with your natural expression and denying to another a legitimate communication that tells how you feel.

The animal’s behavior pattern is more limited than your own, in a way freer and more automatically expressed, but narrower in that the events an animal encounters are not as extensive as your own. (Pause.) You cannot appreciate your spirituality unless you appreciate your creaturehood. It is not a matter of rising above your nature, but of evolving from the full understanding of it. There is a difference.

You will not attain spirituality or even a happy life by denying the wisdom and experience of the flesh. You can learn more from watching the animals than you can from a guru or a minister — or from reading my book. But first you must divest yourselves of the idea that your creaturehood is suspect. Your humanness did not emerge by refusing your animal heritage, but upon an extension of what it is.