“Seth material” search engine (Jane Roberts)

The woman who had interests beyond those acceptable as feminine was often in the same position. Because the intellect and the emotions were considered so separately, however, attempts to express intuitive abilities often resulted in, and often do result in, “unreasonable” behavior.

In certain circles now it is fashionable to deny the intellectual capacities in favor of feeling, sentiment, or intuitive actions. Intellectual concerns then become suspect, and recourse to reason is considered a failing. Instead, of course, intellectual and intuitive behavior should be beautifully blended. In the same way you have attempted to force the expression of love into a purely — or exclusively — sexual orientation. An affectionate caress or kiss between members of the same sex is generally not considered proper. The taboos include most aspects of the sense of touch in connection with the human body.

Touching is considered so basically sexual that the most innocuous touching of any portion of the body by another person is considered potentially dangerous. On the one hand you are too specific in your use of the term “sexuality”; yet in another way, and in that context, you feel that any kind of affection must naturally lead to sexual expression, if given its way. Your beliefs make this sexual eventuality appear as a fact of experience.

This also forces you to guard your emotional life very closely. As a result, any show of love is to some extent inhibited unless it can legitimately find expression sexually. In many instances love itself seems wrong because it must imply sexual expression at times when such expression is not possible, or even desired. Some people have a great capacity for love, devotion, and loyalty, which would naturally seek expression in many diverse ways — through strong enduring friendships, devotion to causes in which they believe, through vocations in which they help others. They may not be particularly sexually oriented. This need not mean that they are inhibiting their sexuality. It is pathetic and ludicrous for them to believe that they must have intercourse frequently in their youth, or to set up standards of normality against which they must measure their sexual experience.

(9:51.) In fact, Western society has attempted to force all expression of love and devotion into sexual activity, or otherwise ban it entirely. Sexual performance is considered the one safe way of using the great potential of human emotions. When it seems to you that society is becoming licentious, in many ways it is most restrained and inhibited.

It means that all options except sexual freedom have been denied. The great force of love and devotion is withdrawn from personal areas of individual creativity through purposeful work. It is being withdrawn from expression through government or law. It is being denied expression through meaningful personal relationships, and forced into a narrow expression through a sexuality that then will indeed become meaningless.

(10:05.) Give us a moment… On the one hand many of you have been taught that sexual expression is wrong, evil, or debasing. You have also been told that if you do not express your sexuality, you are displaying unnatural repression, and furthermore you are led to think that you must above all force yourself to enjoy this ambiguous sexual nature. The old idea that good women do not enjoy sex has hardly disappeared. Yet women are taught that natural expressions of love, playful caresses, are inappropriate unless an immediate follow-through to a sexual climax is given. Men are taught to count their worth according to the strength of the sexual drive and its conquests. They are taught to inhibit the expression of love as a weakness, and yet to perform sexually as often as possible. In such a sexual climate there is little wonder that you become confused.

(Long pause at 11:07.) Heresy was considered female and subversive because it could threaten to destroy the frameworks set about the acceptable expression of religious fervor. The female elements in the Church were always considered suspect, and in the early times of Christianity there was some concern lest the Virgin become a goddess. There were offshoots of Christianity that did not survive, in which this was the case. Parallel developments in religion and government always echo the state of consciousness and its purposes. “Pagan” practices, giving far more leeway to sexual identification and expression, continued well into the 16th century, and the so-called occult underground heretical teachings tried to encourage the development of personal intuition.

Any true psychic development of personality, however, is bound to lead to an understanding of the nature of the psyche that is far too large for any such confusion of basic identity with sexuality. The concept of reincarnation itself clearly shows the change of sexual orientation, and the existence of a self that is apart from its sexual orientation, even while it is also expressed through a given sexual stance. To a good extent, sexual beliefs are responsible for the blocking-out of reincarnational awareness. Such “memory” would necessarily acquaint you with experiences most difficult to correlate with your current sexual roles. Those other-sex existences are present to the psyche unconsciously. They are a portion of your personality. In so specifically identifying with your sex, therefore, you also inhibit memories that might limit or destroy that identification.

The Church did not restrain the sexuality of its priests or the expression of sexuality in previous centuries as much as it tried to divorce the expression of love and devotion from sexuality.

There were also some women who passed as monks, living lives of a solitary nature and carrying on for years. No works bear their feminine names, for they used male ones. It goes without saying that lesbian and homosexual relationships flourished in such surroundings. The Church closed its eyes as long as the relationships were sexual in nature. Only when love and devotion were diverted from the Church was there real concern. Intellect and emotions became further divided then. This resulted of course in an overemphasis upon dogma — rules and the ritualization that had to be colorful and rich because it would be the one outlet allowed in which creativity could be handled. The Church believed that sexual experience belonged to the so-called lower or animal instincts, and so did usual human love. On the other hand, spiritual love and devotion could not be muddied by sexual expression, and so any normal strong relationship became a threat to the expression of piety.