“Seth material” search engine (Jane Roberts)

It is precisely because the inner vitality is not accepted by the ego, that when it is acknowledged by the ego it seems so explosive. The ego attempts, this ego attempts, to stand aside and to deny the inevitability of change. The ego in this case, as in many cases, attempts to maintain stability and permanence at all costs.

This ego in particular, and many egos, consider that the self is the ego alone. The ego considers that therefore it must maintain stability and permanence. It therefore attempts to become rigid, because it considers itself the main representative of the self. It attempts to deny the inner emotions because the changeability of these emotions would seem to threaten its own permanence. It does not want to change. Therefore any seemingly small incident will tend to bring forth the explosion of these emotions quite against the ego’s inclination, precisely because the ego denies them so vehemently.

Reactions will therefore appear to be intensified. Nevertheless this intensification is a pretense that one part of the self plays upon the other part, for the very intensity of the emotional reaction on the part of the ego to even small stimuli, allows the ego to say to itself “I feel deeply, therefore I know the depths of myself.” And this sham allows the ego to continue denying those inner emotions in an effort to maintain its permanence.

What the personality must be led to see is that any real permanence would indeed be the death of the ego and the personality. For as we know, the ego is not the same today, in your terms, as it was yesterday, nor yet as it will be tomorrow. That “I” continually changes.

In other words the apparent intensity of the egotistical reactions is a sham on the part of the ego, to hide the fact that it refuses to become involved with action as a whole, because it fears for its permanence. When the ego understands, and it will, that it is a portion of the whole self, and itself a part of action, then indeed it will not fear for its own permanence, for it will realize that being a part of action, its very nature is dependent upon change, and vitality, and value fulfillment.

I now suggest your break, and I do myself indeed enjoy your pleasant summer evening. I would like to make it plain here, however, that on a surface psychological level, the personality plunges into activity, and it is for the present this portion of the personality with whom we must deal. Nevertheless, beneath there is a denial of involvement, and a strong desire for permanency, both of which are repressed, and the stronger the efforts put forth by the ego to repress these tendencies, then these tendencies will explode with inadequate stimuli. There will be an overaction on the part of the ego to compensate for the refusal to accept involvement on deeper levels.