“Seth material” search engine (Jane Roberts)

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.

Now this also overshadows your relationship with the males to whom you have come in contact. For you have been, on the one hand, terrified of them, and on the other hand wanted a normal relationship. Give me a moment here —on the one hand you desire more from a relationship with a man than you have any right to expect. No human being could ever deliver what you expect a man to deliver in a relationship. This is because you see the male in terms inspired in you when you were a child. You were terrified of the male, your father. On the other hand, you felt that he did contain wisdom, truth, almost godlike qualities. These qualities you attempt to project into the male that you meet. At the same time you are also terrified because of this background. No man can possibly be as godlike as your inner conception. Therefore, each man is bound to disappoint you. At the same time, you hope and pray subconsciously that the man will disappoint you because this male in your mind has godlike qualities that attract you; on the other, you see him as all powerful and as one who gives out punishment and one who is unreasoning and cruel because you felt that your father was cruel. You are afraid, so to speak, to come under a man’s thumb for this reason, to come under his domination. For to do so is to place yourself in a humble position and a frightening position underneath the male figure. Your terror as a child gave you an inner idea of reality and family group whereby you saw yourself completely powerless and helpless under the domination of this father figure. He was the source of all and yet he could at the same time take all away. And you felt, at the same time, that he would indeed do so. Because you were a male in past lives, you resented this all the more strongly. Give us a moment.

You have been afraid that the male would hurt you cruelly—and on purpose, and at the same time, you have endowed him with godlike qualities, and, therefore, demanded more than any man could possibly deliver. I am sure that you realize that when you drive your car, you see yourself in a masculine role, as one of power and strength and one in which you consider yourself invulnerable. Now you are not invulnerable in that car. The reason that you feel invulnerable is that you are subconsciously identifying with this godlike figure and it could lead you into difficulty. Now you have on occasion been cruel to men you have known rather purposely, intending to hurt them before you could be hurt. When you have settled yourself upon a particular man, you see, it becomes a matter of principle with you that you get him. Oh, it does indeed. On the one hand, you want him, on the other hand, as you had to escape from your father, you must also escape from the man and so you are caught in a dilemma. You want him. On the other hand, you must feel that you have independence from him. There was never any communication between you and your father. Therefore, you find it difficult to communicate verbally with a male.

Now I will tell you the material that I have given you will help you and you should listen to it often. It should make one thing clear. Your Mr. Reed is not Mr. Reed’s Mr. Reed. You are not seeing the man as he is. You are seeing the image that you have projected upon him, and no one can live up to that image. I realize that when you discuss him that you say—I know he has failings. This is to assure yourself that, after all, the male is not so all powerful. But you do not see this man’s good points or failings clearly. Some of the qualities that you imagine in him as virtues are not and some of the qualities that you imagine to be failings are not failings. You will never have any relationship with the Dick Reed that you have projected upon a living human being. You may have a relationship with that human being, but there is a world of difference between that human being and the imagined image of him to which you react. And it is that image that you see when you look at him and when think of him. That imagined image is real in your mind, it is reality. But you cannot project that image upon another human being and deny him his own reality. You have no chance in a thousand lives of having a relationship with the man you think of as being Dick Reed, because you cannot have a two-way relationship with an image that is one-sided and has no flesh. Now give us a moment. While we are beginning a job, we may as well do a good one.