“Seth material” search engine (Jane Roberts)

Nevertheless, the ego is the tool by which the hidden self manipulates in the physical universe as you know it. The ego enables you to use or focus your artistic ability along the lines necessary to make it effective on your plane. However when the ego becomes involved with fears to a greater or lesser extent, it ceases to be an effective tool and becomes instead a hammer hitting you incessantly over the head.

These fears do not belong to the subconscious. Then these materializations of panic and pain play about the physical body, projected by the ego and stealing the powers of the subconscious mind from their natural constructive tasks to do so. In other words, the ego becomes a tool to disrupt rather than to create.

In the past you did not understand properly this relationship. You understood the destructive tendencies but you placed them in the subconscious. The endless or seemingly endless circle need not occur now, or in the future. This dissociation of which Ruburt has spoken to you is an excellent discipline that will insure your use of energy in the best possible manner. I am not suggesting that the ego be ignored in any manner, merely that the tool is not allowed to become the master.

You see, dear Joseph, the subconscious and the ego, of course, are both you. For simplicity’s sake I will speak of the ego and the subconscious, though they are actually one. The subconscious forms and projects the materializations of the ego as a tool to enable it to attain its goals. When these goals and talents are attributed to the ego alone they are so to speak decapitated.

Your own subconscious is the fountain of your individuality and personality. From it springs your talent. When the ego becomes too concerned with daily matters, with worry in other words, then the works of the tool become clogged. It becomes ineffective. Dissociation, and I will give you many ways of achieving it, unclogs the tool and is absolutely necessary. The freely working subconscious, or the inner you, is completely capable of taking care of all practical considerations, and will use the ego as a tool to see that this is done.

Because the father freezes emotion in the ritual of fussy compulsion he is actually less dangerous in some ways and more dangerous in others, since the compulsive framework always threatens to explode. Again, dissociation is not only your best weapon but also your most helpful tool in helping both of your parents.