“Seth material” search engine (Jane Roberts)

(9:40.) Regardless of what you have been told, there is no merit in self-sacrifice. For one thing it is impossible. The self grows and develops. It cannot be annihilated. Usually, self-sacrifice means throwing the “burden” of yourself upon someone else and making it their responsibility.

(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.

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.

As I mentioned in Seth Speaks, the Christ entity was too great to be contained in any one man, or for that matter in any one time, so the man you think of as Christ was not crucified (See chapters Twenty-one and Twenty-two of Seth Speaks.)

(A note added later: More information is available, however, in return for the investment in time necessary to receive it. Seth finished his part of the work on this book in mid-July. Not long afterward I came across an illustrated article about Jerusalem in a travel magazine. We saved it for possible reference. One of the photographs accompanying the piece was a double-page, full color aerial view of the entire city in its desert setting; Jane and I found this so evocative that I mounted it for easy study. Jerusalem’s arid environment, coupled with its incredibly complex and active history, led us to speculate anew about the mysterious forces of religious creativity that seemingly had always emanated from there, and were still doing so.

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 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.

(11:52.) One of the Gospels is counterfeit — that is, it was written after the others, and the events twisted to make it appear that some of them happened in a completely different context than they did. Regardless, Christ’s message was one of affirmation.