“Seth material” search engine (Jane Roberts)

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.

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.

Perfection is not being, for all being is in a state of becoming. This does not mean that all being is in a state of becoming perfect, but in a state of becoming more itself. All other emotions are based on love, and in one way or another they all relate to it, and all are methods of returning to it and expanding its capacities.

Now throughout this book I have purposely stayed away from the word “love,” because of various interpretations often placed upon it, and because of the errors frequently committed in its name.

You must first love yourself before you love another.

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.

When you love others, you grant them their innate freedom and do not cravenly insist that they always attend you. There are no divisions to love. There is no basic difference between the love of a child for a parent, a parent for a child, a wife for a husband, a brother for a sister. There are only various expressions and characteristics of love, and all love affirms. It can accept deviations from the ideal vision without condemning them. It does not compare the practical state of the beloved’s being with the idealized perceived one that is potential.

Now: Sometimes you may think that you hate mankind. You may consider people insane, the individual creatures with whom you share the planet. You may rail against what you think of as their stupid behavior, their bloodthirsty ways, and the inadequate and shortsighted methods that they use to solve their problems. All of this is based upon your idealized concept of what the race should be — your love for your fellow man, in other words. But your love can get lost if you concentrate upon those variations that are less than idyllic.

When you think you hate the race most, you are actually caught in a dilemma of love. You are comparing the race to your loving idealized conception of it. In this case however you are losing sight of the actual people involved.

You are putting love on such a plane that you divorce yourself from your real feelings, and do not recognize the loving emotions that are the basis for your discontent. Your affection has fallen short of itself in your experience because you have denied the impact of this emotion, for fear that the beloved — in this case the race as a whole — will not measure up to it. Therefore you concentrate upon the digressions from the ideal. If, instead, you allowed yourself to free the feeling of love that is actually behind your dissatisfaction, then it alone would allow you to see the loving characteristics in the race that now escape your observation to a large degree.

Affirmation is in the spontaneous motion of the body as it dances. Many churchgoers who consider themselves quite religious do not understand the nature of love or affirmation as much as some bar patrons, who celebrate the nature of their bodies and enjoy the spontaneous transcendence as they let themselves go with the motion of their beings.

(Long pause, eyes closed, at 10:55.) The very term, “Love your neighbor as yourself” (Matthew 19:19, Mark 12:31), was an ironic statement, for in that society no man loved his neighbor, but distrusted him heartily. Much of Christ’s humor has been lost, therefore.

Thoughts of peace, particularly in the middle of chaos, take great energy. People who can ignore the physical evidence of wars and purposely think thoughts of peace will triumph — but in your terminology the word “meek” has come to mean spineless, inadequate, lacking energy. In Christ’s time, the phrase about the meek inheriting the earth implied the energetic use of affirmation, of love and peace.

There are indeed lost gospels, written by men in other countries in that time, relating to Christ’s unknown life, to episodes not given in the Bible. These formed a quite separate framework of knowledge that could be accepted by people who had different beliefs than the Jews at that time. The messages were given in other terms, but again they reflected the affirmation of the self and its continued existence after physical death. Love was always stressed.