“Seth material” search engine (Jane Roberts)

Because of its nature ego does not want to adjust. It wants adjustments to be made to it. Because ego is another manifestation of action, it is of course impossible for its aims to be realized. For all its attempts at stability and control, ego itself constantly changes. Ego most of all resents and fights against time as you know it, yet ego is to a large extent responsible for your conception of time. Basically, ego fears both the past and the present. It fears the past because it has already lost control of the past. It fears the future because it is not yet in control of it. It seeks continuity of identity, yet it is forced to realize that the “I” of today is hardly the “I” of thirty years ago.

Ego also fears spontaneity, for it cannot control action; being a part of action, most of its efforts of necessity are thwarted. Yet it is precisely this struggle between ego’s struggles for stability, and the personality’s attempt to expand spontaneously, that is at the basis of much of mankind’s achievements, and that is certainly the basis for much of his art.

In his art we have the nostalgia of the ego for past time, and for lost control of a self that has already vanished, and changed into something new. It is ego who plans for the future, trying to anticipate the environment in which it must operate. Its anticipations, of course, then form that environment.

The ego is scarcely conscious of these. Your experiences occurred when the ego, because of your illness, was momentarily exhausted, its control lessened. The personality was then momentarily aware of realities that the ego would ordinarily attempt to block. These were pulsations, in actuality of corresponding strength, but interpreted differently by you.