“Seth material” search engine (Jane Roberts)

Because of the nature of your society, a large number of people cultivate what I will call an outside-attuned consciousness. Naturally, sensation and knowledge must of course come through enjoyment and use of the physical body, and through the data received from the physical environment, with which the body must necessarily react.

The outside-attuned consciousness, however, is almost dependent upon exterior stimuli for its sense of life and enjoyment. I do not want to oversimplify, yet such a type of consciousness is far more interested in exploring the nature of itself as it relates to exterior conditions or circumstances. It becomes, relatively now, opaque to subjective personal conditions, since it has no secure exterior framework against which the inner condition can be judged.

Primarily, such a consciousness knows itself, or tries to know itself, only in relationship to others or exterior conditions. It avoids introspection. No consciousness is purely tuned into outside conditions only, of course. This type, however, is a cultivated specialization of consciousness in which its nature is known through the impact of exterior rather than interior conditions. Generally speaking, and only generally, it represents the consciousness familiar to many in your society—most likely, the majority.

You felt you could not merge the separate groups of attributes because they were diametrically opposed in your minds. Instead, of course, there are gradations of behavior, and patterns or rhythms in your lives that would naturally flow one into the other, released from the artificial polarities. The polarities are artificial, but there is no doubt that in your society and times the exterior-tuned consciousness is the most paramount. It, of course, by its nature, is not given to introspection, so it does not question its stance as deeply. So some of this disapproval has to do with your own attitudes about the attitudes of others as they view your lives.

Physically, for example, you are in much better physical condition than Joe Bumbalo, but he is a prime example, to you, of the exteriorized consciousness—and while on the one hand you envy his shoveling the walk, you are to some degree underneath all that, somewhat contemptuous—somewhat, now; I do not want to speak too strongly, but simply help you become aware of some feelings you might have submerged because you think they are not nice.

By nature, leaders are not so much at odds with their world as they are ahead of it. The Bumbalos, for example, envy you, as do the Gallaghers, but they are afraid of subjective reality. They have taught their consciousnesses to conform.

Here, as opposed to the apartment, where the life-styles were seemingly in a more transitory situation, you have both again dramatized yourselves to some degree as outsiders in a negative fashion, disapprovingly seeing yourselves in relationship to your neighbors, but not constructively. You could instead have stressed your positive and constructive differences, for your move to the neighborhood, again, to some extent—excuse the constant qualifying—your move has helped the neighbors see themselves in a different light.

All of this is connected with the chest difficulties. The food is not basically related, except as it reflects other issues (as I told Jane this afternoon). Those are relatively shallow, but do operate—that certain foods are good for the body and others are not—that heart disease is connected with cholesterol and dairy products, while skim milk is innocent. The chest difficulty reminds you of heart trouble, and you react negatively then to whole milk.