“Seth material” search engine (Jane Roberts)

It is theoretically possible, for example, for any of you to disperse your consciousness and become a part of any object in the room — or to fly apart, to disperse yourself out into space — without leaving your sense of identity. This is not practical in your terms, yet many of you do it to gain refreshment while you are sleeping. Consciousness by its very characteristics carries the burden of perception. This is the kind of consciousness you are used to thinking of. You cannot imagine it without perception in your terms; and yet consciousness can be vital and alive without your idea of perception. The last part of that sentence is important.

I am pleased because you are thinking this evening, all of you — that is what I want you to do. Ideas have no reality unless you make them your own. Make friends or enemies of them. Fight with them or love them but use and experience them, not only with your intellect but with your feelings.

That is true. When you project your ideas outward, you often behave as if they were not yours but belonged to another. Therefore it behooves you to understand what your ideas and feelings are, and not to be frightened of them.

(Jim H. told of finding a man asleep at his work. Jim explained his ideas and emotions concerning the incident, and wanted to know how he could change them.)

You can indeed change them, but do not deny the part of you that wanted to wring the other man’s neck. You were so frightened of the thought that you immediately inhibited it. Let us consider. You are terrified of the idea that evil is more powerful than good, that one stray violent thought of yours was more important and powerful than the vitality of good. At least you were aware of the thought. Now say the following happened, that in your terms you progressed to the point where you were no longer aware of the feeling —

You certainly understand that I am doing with your case the same thing that I have done with others, so please do not be offended. I do not want any of you, you see, to use these ideas as superficial bandages for your bleeding psyches…. So you are not as bad as I pegged you. You might be inclined in the direction I have indicated, but then so is everyone else in the room, including Ruburt.

I do not define bad. When I use the term it is according to your own definition. You have an idea that good is gentle and bad is violent. This is because in your mind violence and destruction are the same thing. By this analogy, you see, the soft voice is the holy voice and the loud voice is the wicked one, and a strong desire is the bad desire and a weak desire the good one. You become afraid of projecting ideas or desires outward, for in the back of your mind you think that what is powerful is evil.

As Ruburt would put it, your sidekick over here (Jim’s wife, Jean) did not go along with your ideas at all in that life. She was a male at that time, however, and you were a female and a priestess. So was your friend (Bert C.). As a male in that life she had an expanding effect upon your personality, but you were very given to ritual and a belief in magic acts, and to the idea that existence in itself was evil and wrong. You were indeed a member of the sect now called Gnostic.

Not only that, but because you sense in yourself still some sympathy toward the beliefs. While you are freeing yourself you recognize within your psyche a leaning in that direction, and so you lash out whenever you hear such ideas, not realizing that you lash out against yourself.