“Seth material” search engine (Jane Roberts)

At times the ego can hold you in a tight vice, which the dissociation breaks. This is what happened after your exercises. You have been doing very well, for you, in allowing yourself psychic freedom. However conscious fears cause the ego to tighten its grasp and some effects of this nature were starting up again. This is why I suggested that you begin these exercises now. The fact that the fearful ego was beginning to tighten explains your reaction to the exercises. The ego can build up around the subconscious vitality like a glacier, and these exercises melt it away. Even the prickles in your neck are like tiny picks chipping away at icy fears.

The tree is also innerly aware of its environment to an astonishing degree. It maintains contact awareness and the ability to manipulate itself in two completely different worlds, so to speak, one in which it meets little resistance growing upward, and one composed of much heavier elements into which it must grow downward. Man needs artificial methods for example to operate effectively on land or in water, but the so-called unconscious tree manages very nicely in two worlds as diverse certainly as land and water, and makes himself a part of each. I am speaking now of a tree as a “he” for reasons that I will go into in a further discussion.

In drawing up his list of so-called natural laws, I have said that man decided that what appeared to be cause and effect to him was therefore a natural law of the universe. Not only do these so-called laws, which are not laws, vary according to where you are in the universe, they also vary according to what you are in the universe. Therefore your tree recognizes a human being, though it does not see the human being in your terms. To a tree the laws are simply different. And if a tree wrote its laws of the universe, then you would know how different they are.

Man’s ego causes him to interpret everything else in the light of himself. He loses very much in this manner. The ego is definitely an advancement, but it can be compared to the bark of the tree in many ways. The bark of the tree is flexible, extremely vibrant, and grows with the growth beneath. It is a tree’s contact with the outer world, the tree’s interpreter, and to some degree the tree’s companion.

It was this that Ruburt sensed and that caused the emotional explosion. Mr. Burrell would have come to the trailer to tell—and I will say Jane now—that she did not have to pay the 17.50 short on her register. Jane’s father would have asked Mr. Burrell to go to the bar for drinks. The fight would have been started by Jane’s father. Midge, I believe that is her name, would have flirted with Mr. Burrell. You would have been painting in the trailer. Jane would have gone with her father, since I think this particular bar was only a short distance away.

Since she was unable to explain this in logical terms, not understanding it herself, this triggered the cured, psychologically-caused thyroid condition into new activity. She set up the worse fuss of which she was capable to get out, and thankfully for you both she succeeded.

The situation would have been much worse. Ruburt was overly weary, and if I may say so, bleary. He would have tried to make a serious mistake at this time. In pity and against his own intuition, he would have tried to move in with your parents. You would have both attempted to support them, with disastrous psychic effects. There is little more I would like to say here. I promise you that neither of you will feel any poor results from tonight’s long session. Please do take a break.

I do wish to show you how things happen or almost happen. There are always clear reasons, though not necessarily clear causes. Loren is as lucky in his way with his wife as you are in yours. I will go into Ruburt’s background later. It does not have as immediate implications however since she, or he, has erected his own barriers along these lines, and the parents are not so involved as far as distance is concerned. Ruburt, or Jane, amputated the present mother for necessity’s sake and for survival’s sake.

You will see that you came up on top of the pile after all. And now my dear friends I bid you a fond good night. I can only say that I hope I haven’t caused you pain, since the opposite is my intention.