“Seth material” search engine (Jane Roberts)

(While she was waking up, Jane asked me several times if she had really been asleep. It was easy for me to say yes, since I had come awake first. Before the session tonight Jane said she hoped Seth would explain the occurrence, but surprisingly — even though a considerable amount of personal material was received — the matter wasn’t covered.

A person with several existences stressing intellectual achievement might purposely then decide upon a life in which mental abilities are beyond him, and the emotions allowed a full play that he had denied them “earlier.”

(9:54.) Since all existences are simultaneous, this simply means his stressing certain aspects in this life — at the expense of others, you would say — and setting up a frame of reference that may seem to be limiting. On the other hand the personality involved may see this as a most rewarding and expansive experience, in which the emotions are allowed freedoms ordinarily denied. Characteristically, some personalities prefer lifetime experiences in which accomplishment and development follows an even course. Others demand great contrast. One of the latter may be miserably poor in one life, luxuriously rich in another, an intellectual giant in still another, a great athlete, and then a complete invalid. Individual differences operate then in the kinds of life situations chosen.

(Very emphatically at 10:03:) On an individual basis a grave illness, for instance, will represent the adoption of a particular highly intense focus in which a given aspect of usual experience is deliberately cut out or denied; the context of life itself must then be magnified along other lines. In somewhat the same manner, this also applies to those born in extreme poverty or in the most seemingly unfortunate of family situations. The life challenge is inherent within the problem itself and springs from it. Usually, though not always, a peculiar personal achievement results precisely because of the given difficulty (intently).

Now this accomplishment need not involve some great artwork or invention, or political leadership, for example, though it may. Often the successful activity represents a challenge on the part of the personality who set it in terms of psychological creativity, and the overall enrichment of experience. Those involved, such as family, will have acquiesced to the situation “earlier.” Often, particularly in the case of mental or physical birth defects, the incapacitated person will be accepting that role not only because of personal reasons; he or she will also be choosing that part for the family as a whole.

Many ordinary illnesses also involve the family group to some degree. The predominating beliefs of the sick person will always be paramount, however. The group situation will encompass an acquiescence on the part of other family members.

(Pause.) Many great contrasts of a social nature have the same kind of inner meaning; here whole groups of individuals chose particular life situations in which, for example, poverty and illness predominate, while other areas of the world (or of any given nation) enjoy the highest technological advances, wealth and prosperity. Separately each personality has a private reason for such an affiliation. But on other levels, through the contrasting focuses of poverty and wealth, scientific accomplishments or the lack of them, opposites are brilliantly apparent. Technological progress, followed as a main focus, automatically portrays its benefits and its disadvantages.

A person may choose a great talent instead, through which he or she will perceive reality and concentrate all experience. This will serve as a formidable focus, yet by its nature it may often preclude other experiences that many individuals find quite normal. Some artists with great ability may shut out intellectual maturity, utilizing native emotional qualities to such an extent and with such intensity that the mental reasoning faculties are largely shunted aside. (Pause.) Without rational illumination, the emotional elements may be so unwieldy that the artist, for all of his spontaneous expression, cannot relate in any kind of permanent situation of an intimate nature. For reason and emotion are natural counterparts.

Someone else may choose to focus upon intellectual achievement to such a degree that he shuts out all true closeness, and though he can accept a permanent relationship, he will not experience the emotional richness that others may derive from a much briefer encounter. Therefore each of you choose — ahead of time, in your terms — the kind of framework through which you will contend with this life situation. This applies personally and collectively.

The interaction is constant, however, and in all of your presents, creative. You draw on their knowledge as they draw on yours, and this of course applies to personalities that you would consider future. You have a gigantic pool of information and experience to draw upon, but this will be utilized according to your present conscious beliefs. If you understand that the point of power is in the present, then you have an inexhaustible realm of ability and energy at your command.