“Seth material” search engine (Jane Roberts)

If you will remember what you know of the trance state, you are for example in a light trance, able to maintain awareness of yourself, your environment and your place in it. You simply behave somewhat differently, not bestirring yourself in any direction unless the suggestion to do so be given you.

The awareness of plant life lies along these lines. In a deep trance there is oblivion afterward, that is the subject though fully aware of what is going on while in deep trance, can remember nothing of it afterward. The awareness of plant life is also like the awareness of a subject in deep trance. Except for the suggestion and stimulus received by regular natural forces on your plane, the plant life does not bestir itself in other directions. But like the subject in trance, our plant is aware. Its other abilities lie unused for the time and latent, but they are present.

A tree knows a human being also. Not only for example by the weight of a boy upon its branches, but by the vibrations in the air as adults pass, which hit the tree’s trunk at varying distances, and even by such things as voices. You must remember my earlier remarks about mental enzymes, and my remark that color can sometimes be heard and sight be seen.

Neither should the ego react so violently that it remembers and reacts to past storms in the midst of clear and sunny weather. You can understand this analogy, Joseph. You know that such a tree bark would be death to the tree. What you must still understand is that the same applies to yourself.

Your impulse at the time was the same as Jane’s, if you remember, but you were afraid of the practical aspects. Your parents would have visited you last year, and be strongly tempted to settle in a small town northeast of Miami, where your father would be amazed at the opportunities in his own business. Things have changed. Free will constantly operates. I will not attempt to give you definite so-called practical advice now, but you can learn from this and the paths will be clear.

If you remember, at one time when you had just arrived from Florida she convinced her landlady to give you an apartment with no money down. This was another opportunity out that would have avoided the nearby association with your parents, but was not taken.