“Seth material” search engine (Jane Roberts)

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 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.

You are not able, at this point, you have never been able to look at a man as an individual human being. You have not seen him as he is, for you have endowed him with all these qualities of which I have told you, and with all the fears that go with them. In the overall then, you deny yourself the experience of really knowing an individual male, for you will not see him as he is. The man realizes, of course, that you do not see him as he is, and each one of the men involved has resented it subconsciously. You do not communicate with an individual man; you communicate with your idea of what this man is, this man with the godlike qualities that can bring both joy and punishment.

This attitude of yours places the other individual under very strong psychic pressure. You inflict them with this strong anxiety of yours. They are afraid of saying anything wrong because subconsciously they know that you will exaggerate the slightest movement of the smallest muscle. They become very cautious. Now the information that I have given you this evening should help you to begin to see through this image that until now you have projected upon the males. The information will give you several peepholes through which you may squint and see the individual on the other side of this false image. You can make further inroads through that image. The fact that you have reacted in this manner thus far does not mean that you must continue to do so. In other words you are not fated, you see, to always chase this false image or project it outward. It is not eternal, you have formed it. It has not formed you…

([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.”

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.

([Pat:] “I had thought of that before. I knew that I should have taken advantage of the opportunities to meet people. I knew that I was probably attracting these opportunities to me because subconsciously I knew the exercises would be healthful.”)