“Seth material” search engine (Jane Roberts)

Now if you would each, for ten minutes a day, open yourselves to your own reality there would be no question of self-justification, for you would realize the miraculous nature of your own identity. I have said this before in class: You are as dead now, and as alive, as you will ever be. In life you can be as dead as you think any corpse is — even, by contrast, far deader.

When I come here to speak I focus my energy, but not toward this room as a destination, for in your terms this room does not exist to me. In your terms, this room does not even exist to you. You pretend to agree that it does; we meet in no place of space or time. The true meetings that take place here have nothing to do with the room or the people that you think you are. You know that you hallucinate the room, that you are as much in trance here as you ever are when you are in psychological time. I simply want you to realize that if this life is a trance, then you can turn the direction of your consciousness to perceive greater realities that presently exist. You can be aware of your own greater identity, even as I am. You sit within the miracle of yourselves and ask for signs. It is your inner eyes I would open.

The decision is your own according to your understanding. You cannot be hounded from one level of reality to another by a fear that you do not understand. You cannot be threatened in this life by fears from your early childhood, or by so-called past existences, unless you so thoroughly believe in the nature of fear that you allow yourselves to be conquered by it. Each of your personalities are free to accept and develop, from the miraculous banks of reality, those experiences and emotions that you want, and to reject those you do not want.

All you have to do is realize your own freedom. You form the reality that you know, not esoterically, not symbolically, not philosophically. Some great oversoul doesn’t form it for you — you cannot put the burden there, either. You have in the past, collectively and individually, blamed a god or a fate for the nature of your personal realities — those aspects, indeed that you did not like.

The personality is given the greatest gift of all; you get exactly what you want to get. You create from nothing the experience that is your own. If you do not like your experience, then look within yourself and change it. But realize also that you are responsible for your joys and triumphs, and that the energy to create any of these realities comes from the inner self. What you do with it is up to the individual personality.

You are not “programmed.” Nothing happens because it must happen. Every thought that you have now changes reality. Not only reality as you know it, but all reality. No act of yours predisposes a future self to act in a particular manner. There are banks of activity from which you can draw or choose not to draw.

(Bernice M.: “Do we make instantaneous decisions? For example, I was thinking of the Los Angeles earthquake today. A man walked out into the street and was killed by a falling brick. What made this one person in the entire building walk out?”)

This particular individual was quite aware of what would occur, on what you would call an unconscious basis. He was not predestined to die. He chose both the time, in your terms, and the method, for reasons of his own.

(Bert C.: “What recourse would the poor individual who was born with all of these seemingly insurmountable handicaps have, were she to say consciously, at the ego level, ‘I just don’t want any of this. I would have much preferred to have been born aristocratic’?”)

Your main point of contention is brought about by the emotional barriers that are caused by the difference in terms. It is as if you choose to work for a day in the slums. It would be ridiculous for you to choose to do this, and then say to yourself, “Why did I choose to work in the slums? I would prefer to work on Fifth Avenue.” You know the reason, and your entire identity knows the reason. You hide it from the present self simply to insure the fact that the present reality is not a pretended one.

A rich man who tries to be poor for a day to learn what poverty is learns little, because he cannot forget the wealth that is available to him. Though he eats the same poor fare as the poor man, and lives in the same poor house for a day — or for a year or five years — he knows he has his mansion to return to. So you hide these things from yourself so that you can relate. You forget your home so that you can return to it enriched.

You are not now what you were ten minutes earlier. You are not the same being physically, psychologically, spiritually, or psychically, and ten minutes later you will be different again. To deny this is to try to force consciousness into some rigid form from which it cannot ever be freed, to apply rules to it that make a very neat psychological landscape.

You should hear your own echo of my voice as a symbol of your own energy and joy. Forget the cringing selves that you sometimes are and remember, instead, the magic essence of your own being that sings even now through your fingertips. That is the reality which you are seeking. Experience it fully. Do you need an old dead thing like me to tell you what life is? I should be ashamed.