“Seth material” search engine (Jane Roberts)

(Jane has been studying psy-time regularly, and reports that almost as a matter of routine now she attains what she calls an “excellent state”, involving a feeling of much lightness and separation from her physical self. She believes she is on the verge of being able to travel from her physical body, and is getting used to the idea very gradually. She often feels herself to be partially “out” of her body, but as yet always exercises control to avoid going too far, too fast.

It is this dilemma, precisely between identity’s constant attempts to maintain stability, and action’s inherent drive for change, that results in the imbalance, the exquisite creative by-product that is consciousness of self. We have a series of creative strains. Identity must seek stability while action must seek change, yet identity could not exist without change, without action, for it is the result of action, and not apart from it but a part of it.

It should be fairly easy to understand now how the second dilemma evolved from the first. I have said that the second dilemma resulted in, and constantly results in, consciousness of self. Now. Consciousness of self is not the same thing as consciousness of ego self. Consciousness of self is still consciousness directly connected with action.

The ego is a state resulting from the third creative dilemma, which happens when consciousness of self attempts to separate itself from action.

A note of further explanation here. The difference between consciousness of self as a result of our second dilemma, and ego consciousness as a result of our third dilemma, should be made very clear.

Consciousness of self involves a consciousness of self within, amid, and as a part of action. Ego consciousness, on the other hand, involves a state in which consciousness of self attempts to divorce itself from action, an attempt on the part of consciousness to perceive action as an object. Here we see that ego consciousness, in this attempt, strives to perceive action not only as separate, but to perceive it in such a fashion that it appears to ego that action is not only separate from itself, that is separate from the ego, but that action is initiated by the ego, and a result rather than a cause of ego’s own existence.

Action basically can never complete itself. Inner vitality, materializing in any form whatsoever, at once multiplies the possibilities of further materialization. At the same time, because inner vitality is self-generating, only a minute fraction of inner vitality is needed to seed a whole universe.

To some degree he becomes action. Like every other consciousness he is always action, but this evening he experienced to some degree action directly, without the usual attempt of the self to separate from action.