“Seth material” search engine (Jane Roberts)

In normal terms in life, while the conditions for life are given, the nature of physical time means that practically speaking life will be full of surprises, for in usual terms you do not know what will happen tomorrow. In that context people take “risks.” They set up prerogatives. They do not usually concentrate with the same intensity in all areas of their lives, so there is seldom what you might think of as any ideal balance. If your health is bad enough, of course, you will die. If you are poor enough, of course, you will starve, or freeze to death in the wintertime. If you are lonely enough you may go mad, as people do in isolation cells.

Now there are some people who consider overall balance a prerogative, and you will usually find them in decent health, with average concerns, and you will not find them taking risks. The subconscious does not exist, of course. “It” is a highly personalized portion of the self, uniquely tuned. Some people enjoy risks. The body may be in excellent health, and die that way in an accident. But the subconscious knows that the quality of life for that individual involves such exhilaration, and such a person literally chooses that rather than, for example, what someone else might consider a well-balanced long life.

One flower may die before another. One may be blemished and the other not, but none are the less flowers for that. Ruburt was convinced he needed certain protections. His judgments, and yours to a lesser extent, can be regarded as the flower’s blemishes, though I am aware it is not easy for you to see this in that light.

Your other dream involves Miss Bowman’s desire for death—her knowledge that although her mother died at an old age she is young and active at another level of reality—and it was Miss Bowman’s image of her mother as a younger woman that you saw. Your parents were simply symbols to you. They were not active in the message. (Miss Bowman was my high school art teacher.)