“Seth material” search engine (Jane Roberts)

And good evening to our friend. I do have some remarks for you and I hope that they will be helpful. You must remember to hold your head up. You should know better than to cower when you come here. I have no whip; and I would not use one if I had one. You are not sure enough of your own abilities or of your own worth. You cannot drive through physical life in the same way that you drive your car down the highway. You shall indeed, get traffic tickets and of a different kind, only you yourself give yourself tickets. You cannot force reality to give you what you want. You cannot manipulate events for egotistical purposes. You can manipulate events and you can manipulate them for your own egotistical purposes; but when you do so, you give yourself a traffic ticket. You must want what is best for your own development and the development of others rather than specifically determining what you think consciously is better for you and then trying to force or coerce fate to get this for you. If you want what is best for your own development and what is best for the development of others, then you shall attain it. It shall come to you effortlessly. I am leading up to certain issues here. You are not always aware of what is best for you on a conscious level. Often the person that you think you want or need is not the person you want or need on other levels. When you drive your car you often attempt to speed through reality as quickly as you can, and you are pleased with yourself as the driver of the vehicle. You like driving because you feel that it gets you where you want to go and quickly, and you do not mind breaking a few small rules of the road in the process. Now the small rules that you break, are indeed, minute ones. It is not that you break a specific rule; it is the attitude that allows you to break the rule; and this applies to other roads beside the physical highway. You want to get to your destination too quickly. The destination is within you. You do not have to go any place to get that destination; and it is only when you think that that destination lies elsewhere that you allow yourself to go astray. Your identity is within you and do not look for it in others. This is perhaps the strongest point of my message to you this evening, the one I would have you take to heart. When you realize that your own identity is within you will not spend energy seeking to find yourself in others. Others cannot give you a sense of worth; this is your own. Any lack is your own lack. I may perhaps deal with more specific issues this evening. But I will not discuss them until these points have been made.

Now you have indeed been doing well. And I do congratulate you. You are too impatient both with your own development and the development of others. You want your destination now and you want to get to that destination as quickly as possible, 85-95 miles a minute, you see. You have given yourself several traffic tickets. Now, you have learned a good deal, and I know that you have tried. It does no good to understand issues intellectually, however, or even to understand them intuitively unless you understand them so thoroughly that they become a part of your daily life. Much that you know you have made a part of your life, but you still wish to use your knowledge for your own conscious purposes. You are still not willing to say let me develop as I should develop. You are still saying let me develop as I think I should develop. The I being a highly egotistical I. You are still saying, let me develop as I want to develop. You are still saying I want this person or I want that person or that thing. Therefore shall I use this ability and this knowledge to gain it. And that is why you have given yourself a traffic ticket now and then, What you are learning is a technique for self-development. You cannot use it, therefore, to attain those things that do not pertain to your own self-development and the techniques will not help you get something that you were not meant to have nor that you have before decided as an entity that you should not have. I will leave specifics for later. Nevertheless, the facts remain that your own inner self and your own entity have given you challenges that you have accepted. Now you know these challenges; subconsciously you are aware of them. Consciously you do not want to accept them and this is one reason why you have had difficulty with the pendulum. This is not out of the ordinary. This happens to many personalities. It is nothing to blame yourself for. You are certainly in the midst of a certain line of development. You cannot blame yourself for not being further along the line. The very fact that you are here this evening, the very fact that you are trying as hard as you have been shows that you are indeed developing and that you are indeed learning. There must be an open-minded, an openhearted attitude here. You must not try to use what you have learned in a narrow, limiting way. This hampers your own development. It closes your eyes to many possibilities that will be important to you. It is natural, perhaps, to want to use what you have learned, this information, as a technique to achieve what you at any particular time think desirable, a particular person, a particular thing. But what is important is the inner development. If this is taken care of, it will automatically lead you to the person that is best for you and to the circumstances that will help you develop. To insist that a specific individual or a specific goal be attained through these methods is limiting. There must always be the acknowledgement that you do not consciously as yet realize the depths of yourself, the goals you have set and the challenges, and this material should be used to open up your inner horizons and to lead you in those directions toward which your inner self has already set you. If you then egotistically, say—No—this particular situation is what I want, then you may be blocking the inner direction which has been meant for you. I said I would discuss some particular material and so I shall shortly. But the inner attitude is far more important. I suggest, Joseph, that you take a break and I shall continue.

Now, you fear that I am about to leap down your throat and I can assure you I will not do so. Now your feelings toward me before this session have very much to do with other attitudes that are very important to you and very ingrained. Some of these are obvious and have to do with this life only; others have to do with past lives. Now you have been terrified of your father from the time you were an infant. And before the session began, You thought of me as an old, but wise and extremely powerful male adult, as you thought of your father when you were a child.

([Pat:]I had been terrified of my father for the first 19 years of my life. Indeed, I never saw my father as a person but rather as a dark shadow with a club. My father had a temper that was aimed at us children and at my mother. [Yet my father is a very loving person. I know that now. We are very close, now. I love my father deeply. He has mellowed in his attitude toward my youngest sister, also.] We got spanked when we misbehaved, which is something I’ve always been ashamed to admit to others. I didn’t want my friends to know my father spanked us. I wanted my family to be a happy one. I was always afraid to bring friends home for fear my mother and father might argue and embarrass me. Also, I didn’t think my dad wanted us to bring friends home.

… He is afraid of any contacts that would … It seems here that there is a certain thing that he fears will happen to him if he involves himself in any relationship that would result in a family group. There is something here particularly with him… an intense loyalty from a past life having to do with his parents. There was a situation involving the three of them and he abandoned them in a way that he interpreted as a betrayal. The relationship between them then was different than it is now. He will not leave them now for he feels that he abandoned them in the past. In this past of which I speak there was a physical difficulty suffered after he abandoned them; and if he leaves them now, he is afraid that this physical difficulty will return. The main problem in his case stems from this particular immediate past life. We are trying to focus in on this.

([Rob:] “It gives you an idea how things can operate on a subconscious level. He feels beholden to his parents. His psychic energy has chosen this way, possibly, of establishing karma. It’s not an idea of punishment, it’s an idea of further spiritual development. In this life he has chosen to be a son to these people, in a way to be of service to them, to help others.”

Now, ordinary adult responsibilities, you see, would take him away from these two individuals and so he has taken steps to see that he is not involved. Give us a moment. He is more bound to one of these persons than the other for one was a younger brother. He was extremely religious in his past life and the love of music connected with the church is reflected here. His name was strange, I am not too clear on this. The family name in the past: Achman. (Pat learned that Dick’s family has an Ackerman branch in June 1968.) The first portion like oxtagon.

He did voluntarily choose to be born as a son in this existence. Now he rationalizes on a conscious level his reasons for remaining home. You said earlier that around the school there was the expression he “loves them and leaves them”. You see, a very cruel interpretation and a very literal interpretation of his action in a past life, this coming through in an entirely different situation in this life. He is, of course, aware subconsciously of this and acts in such a way for he feels more honest. Through his actions in this life he is trying to make an honest statement about actions in the past. There is, of course, no punishment involved. His secrecy also is a direct result of these past existences, for once he spoke too much and betrayed too much, so now he remains secretive about matters that he considers important. The two brothers never did hold him responsible, however. They understood the situation. They knew that the girl had been terrified and spoke only out of fear and did not mean to betray them. In this life, then, the parents do not mean to hold him. They are not subconsciously trying to chain him; they are not subconsciously trying to bind him. He has chosen to act in this particular manner. He would be much freer if he’d realize that the brothers do not hold him responsible. And the betrayal, while a betrayal, was understandable, and that he spoke out of fear and did not intend to betray. If you will forgive me, I do not think we should use time in the session with your question about your friend’s poetry. It is not important in comparison to other information, nor is it important to the man’s development, nor to your own. Now I know that you speak of me highly; and if I wore a hat, I would tip it to you. You are helping other people and you will continue to do so. Now that you have some insight into the reasons for certain difficulties, you can begin to do something about them. Your problem is not with your Mr. Reed. Your problem is to rid yourself of the image that you have that you project upon him. You will not see him thoroughly until you do so; and in carrying this image with you, you see, you do not see the possibilities in many individuals whom you have already met. For you could not see through this image. When you read or listen to tonight’s session, you will see that I have given you some insight into your own overreactions. Now these cause the variation in your moods. You may ask me questions.