“Seth material” search engine (Jane Roberts)

Action is therefore a part of all structure. Here again is an apparent dilemma, an exquisite imbalance whose result is consciousness and existence. For consciousness and existence do not exist because of delicate balances, so much as they are made possible by lacks of balances, so richly creative there would be no reality as it is understood to be, if balance were ever maintained.

This first dilemma results in action, and from action’s own working upon itself we have seen that identity was formed, and that these two are inseparable. We will discuss the second dilemma after your break. I suggest your break now.

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.

Ego consciousness is the result of our third dilemma.

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 exists within action. There are dimensions of action from which all diversity arises. All individuality that seems to be swept away because one action seems to terminate another, such individuality is indeed the result of the dimensions of action.