“Seth material” search engine (Jane Roberts)

Affirmation means acceptance of your own miraculous complexity. It means saying “yes” to your own being. It means acquiescing to your reality as a spirit in flesh. Within the framework of your own complexity, you have the right to say “no” to certain situations, to express your desires, to communicate your feelings.

If you do so, then in the great flow and sweep of your eternal reality there will be an overall current of love and creativity that carries you. Affirmation is the acceptance of yourself in your present as the person that you are. Within that acceptance you may find qualities that you wish you did not have, or habits that annoy you. You must not expect to be “perfect.” As mentioned earlier, your ideas of perfection mean a state of fulfillment beyond which there is no future growth, and no such state exists. (See the 626th session in Chapter Five, for instance.)

“Love your neighbor as yourself.” Turn this around and say, “Love yourself as you love your neighbor,” for often you will recognize the goodness in another and ignore it in yourself. Some people believe there is a great merit and holy virtue in what they think of as humility. Therefore to be proud of oneself seems a sin, and in that frame of reference true affirmation of the self is impossible. Genuine self-pride is the loving recognition of your own integrity and value. True humility is based upon this affectionate regard for yourself, plus the recognition that you live in a universe in which all other beings also possess this undeniable individuality and self-worth.

Fake humility can cause you to tear down the value of others, because if you accept no worth in yourself you cannot see it in anyone else either. True self-pride allows you to perceive the integrity of your fellow human beings and permits you to help them use their strengths. Many people make a great show out of helping others, for example, encouraging them to lean upon them. They believe this to be a quite holy, virtuous enterprise. Instead they are keeping other people from recognizing and using their own strengths and abilities.

A child who says, “I gave up my life for my parents and devoted myself to their care,” means, “I was afraid to live my own life, and afraid to let them live theirs. And so in ‘giving up’ my life I gained the life I wanted.”

Love does not demand sacrifice. Those who fear to affirm their own being also fear to let others live for themselves. You do not help your children by keeping them chained to you, but you do not help your aged parents either by encouraging their sense of helplessness. The ordinary sense of communication given you through your creaturehood, if spontaneously and honestly followed, would solve many of your problems. Only repressed communication leads to violence. The natural force of love is everywhere within you, and the normal methods of communication are always meant to bring you in greater contact with your fellow creatures.

(Pause.) Love yourselves and do yourselves just honor, and you will deal fairly with others. When you say “no,” or deny, you always do so because in your mind and feelings, a present situation, or a proposed one, falls far short of some ideal. The refusal is always in response to something that is considered, at least, to be a greater good. If you do not have too-rigid ideas of perfection, then ordinary denial serves a quite practical purpose. But never negate the present reality of yourself because you compare it to some idealized perfection.

By accepting yourself and joyfully being what you are, you fulfill your own abilities, and your simple presence can make others happy. You cannot hate yourself and love anyone else. It is impossible. You will instead project all the qualities you do not think you possess upon someone else, do them lip service, and hate the other individual for possessing them. Though you profess to love the other, you will try to undermine the very foundations of his or her being.

Many people who consider themselves truth seekers and spiritual are filled with it. They often use religious terms to express themselves. They will say, “I am nothing, but the spirit of God moves through me, and if I do any good it is because of God’s spirit and not my own,” or, “I have no ability of my own. Only the power of God has any ability.”

If you are a part of God then He is also a part of you, and in denying your own worth you end up denying His as well. (Pause.) I do not like to use the term “He,” meaning God, since All That Is is the origin of not only all sexes but of all realities, in some of which sex as you think of it does not exist.

With every translation the Bible has changed its meaning, being interpreted in the language of the times. Christ spoke in terms of good and bad spirits because these represented the people’s beliefs. (See the 647th session in Chapter Twelve for related material.) In their terms he showed them that “bad” spirits could be vanquished; but these were, then, symbols accepted as realities by the people — sometimes for quite “normal” diseases and human conditions.

Christ meant, “You form your own reality. Those who think thoughts of peace will find themselves safe from war and dissension. They will be untouched by it. They will escape, and indeed inherit the earth.”

The man called Christ was not crucified. In the overall drama however it made little difference what was fact, in your terms, and what was not — for the greater reality transcends facts and creates them. You have free will. You could interpret the drama as you wished. It was given to you. Its great creative power still exists and you use it in your own way, even changing your own symbolism as your beliefs change. But the main idea is the affirmation that the physical being, the self that you know, is not annihilated with death. This comes through even in the distortions. The whole concept of God the Father, as given by Christ, was indeed a “new testament.” The male image of God was used because of the sex orientation of the times, but beyond this the Christ personality said, “…the kingdom of God is within (among) you” (Luke 17:21).

In terms of time — evolution as you think of it — emerging consciousness had come to the point where it delighted so in distinctions and differences, that even in small geographical areas multitudinous groups, cults and nationalities were assembled, each proudly asserting its own individuality and worth over the others. In the beginning in those terms, man’s emerging consciousness needed the freedom to disperse itself, to become different, to originate bases for various characteristics, and assert individuations. By Christ’s time, however, some principle of unity was necessary by which this diversification would also experience a sense of unity and feel its oneness.

He “consorted” with prostitutes (Luke 7:33–50) and the poor, and his disciples were hardly men that would be called the city fathers. Yet, many who consider themselves religious people hold on to respectability most of all. Christ used the vernacular of the times and in his own way spoke out against dogmatic ideas, as well as temples that pretended to be repositories of holy knowledge but were instead concerned with money and prestige. (Mark 11:15–18). Yet many who consider themselves followers of Christ now turn against the outcasts that he himself considered brothers and sisters.

He affirmed the reality of the individual over any organization while still realizing that some system was necessary. His whole message was that the exterior world is the manifestation of the interior one, that the “kingdom of God” is made flesh.