“Seth material” search engine (Jane Roberts)

This time and particularly since adolescence ended he was able to let go the other types of greediness, letting the cigarette take place of all the rest. There is here also what I may call a sort of air panic, an insatiable taking in of air that the nervous puffing of a cigarette sometimes satisfies, even a basis in claustrophobia where the personality feels it is not getting enough air or is closed in.

There is also here connected only with his present personality an ego image of the writer with a cigarette. In this case the cigarette represents independence and even individuality, and even female emancipation. So it is all bound up together in a rather mazelike web. I hope that when Ruburt understands this it will make the situation easier for him.

As I said it also has to do with a panicky gobbling up of air as if he could never get enough. As a child at one time he died from suffocation, and this also has its bearings here in the present, the panicky gulping of air being a mechanism of subconscious memory. I do hope that this helps him.

The personality here has been giving as a rule but also took in all it could. I hope that this also answers some questions that you might have had, Joseph, along these lines.

No. It is his tendency to gobble here that is important. He has given up in this life gobbling food and drink. In past lives he was never temperate, neither in a physical sense, emotionally or intellectually. This was not in many ways bad. However when the intemperate personality does not discriminate then the basic characteristic can cause unpleasantness. He was always very generous for example and kind, even overly kind. On the other hand he ate and drank too much. He was just overeager as a rule.

There has been here a willingness to experience, to experiment and to give as well as a ferocious capacity to take in. The trouble in the past has been a lack of discretion and self-discipline. He was always a pleasure-loving personality however and avoided anything unpleasant. His early circumstances in this life were chosen by him as a needed experience. In other lives he was able to exist without too much adversity and this time he chose troublesome and truly tragic circumstances as a needed challenge.

There are whole areas of material here that we have not discussed so that this is spotty, but we will go into it more deeply. There are no laws to force personalities to use all their abilities. A personality will not choose unfavorable circumstances of rebirth until he himself sees that necessary discipline can be achieved in no other manner. Therefore extremely hot and extremely cold countries go largely undeveloped. But once development begins to occur it is swift.

Your generation as a whole had to learn the importance of thought and responsibility. You had to learn that basically to hate is to kill. The lesson was a practical one. The Germans and the Jews made it plain. Had the hatred not existed in the Germans, it could not have been channeled as it was against the Jews. Free will operated here as always.

I haven’t had the opportunity to use my sense of humor lately but it is still here as you will discover. This is one of those nights when I dislike saying goodbye for now, but I will. And Ruburt please heed my advice, all of it.