“Seth material” search engine (Jane Roberts)

Others must be divested of many impeding ideas and symbols, as explained earlier. The time of choosing may happen almost immediately, in your terms, or it may be put off for a much longer period while training is carried on. The main impediments standing in the way of the time of choosing are, of course, the faulty ideas harbored by any given individual.

Obviously, however, these conditions are also impediments to the time of choosing. It goes without saying that an obsession with earthly concerns also acts in the same manner. In such instances, often the personality will insist upon focusing his perceptive abilities and energies toward physical existence. This is a psychic refusal to accept the fact of death. The individual knows quite well that he is dead in your terms, but he refuses to complete the psychic separation.

The mechanics of transition therefore are highly variable, as the mechanics of physical life are highly variable. Many of the impediments that I have mentioned impede progress not only after death, but during your own physical existence. This should certainly be taken into consideration. An overly strong identification with the sexual characteristics can also hold back progress. If an individual considers identity strongly in terms of male or female identity, then such a person may refuse to accept the fact of the sexual changes that occur in reincarnational existences. This kind of sexual identification, however, also impedes personality development during physical life.

Now: While, generally speaking, the issues just mentioned operate as impediments, there are always exceptions. A belief in heaven that is not an obsessional belief can be used as a useful framework, as a basis of operation in which an individual will often accept easily then, the new explanations that will be offered.

In such a system, even good becomes suspect, because an equal evil is seen to follow it. The god-versus-devil, angels-versus-demons — the gulf between animals and angels — all of these distortions are impediments. In your system of reality now you set up great contrasts and opposing factors. These operate as root assumptions within your reality.