“Seth material” search engine (Jane Roberts)

In its own way, a neighborhood fire serves the same purpose, among others, and so does a local or regional disaster. The nature of your conscious mind demands change and dramatic meaning, a sense of power, and aspirations against which to judge individual direction. A “perfect” society, idealistically speaking, would provide these qualities by encouraging each individual to use his potentials to the fullest, to revel in his challenges, and to be led on by his great natural excitement as he tries to extend powers of creative potency in his own unique way.

(Slowly at 11:06:) When such opportunities are denied then there are riots, wars, and natural catastrophes. A sense of power is any creature’s right. I speak here again of power as the ability to act creatively and with some effectiveness. A dog chained too long often becomes vicious. A man who believes his actions have no value seeks out situations in which he uses his power to act, yet often without worrying about whether the action will have a constructive or negative effect.

Though it may not seem so to you, these are all creative procedures, and corrective ones. (Long pause.) You intuitively feel a great connection between your individual subjective moods and the weather, yet you attribute this to mean that you are reacting to exterior physical events that exist quite independently of yourselves. This is hardly the case.

Numbers of you are looking for a state of “peace” in which there is a static sort of bliss, with all questions forever answered and all problems solved. Some of you think that this will somehow be miraculously accomplished for you. If you recognized the power of your own being, you would know that it ever seeks greater realms of creativity and experience, in which new challenges are inherent — for all problems are challenges.