“Seth material” search engine (Jane Roberts)

There are biological families. There are also all kinds of other groups which are not necessarily family substitutes, but different kinds of families. Social organizations, clubs, and other frameworks of course to some extent apply here, and supply for many people frameworks in which certain relationships can be encountered that are specific—limited in some ways, perhaps, to certain specific interests, and yet they give a sense of belonging.

All societies are different. The tenants at 458 at one time formed a kind of family, and to some extent that relationship continues, as far as the two of you are concerned, with Ann and Leonard. You remember past tenants together as people recall distant or dead family members. And in particular you chose the conditions of the flood and took part in a joint history.

In Turkey you dealt with an order rather than a family—a tribal order, so to speak, with males predominating. It was of a religious and warlike nature, in which the sword predominated. Women had no part to play. Ruburt was the leader of such a group, and you were what could be considered his lieutenant, or closest at hand. The group was given to mystical practices, in which the dictums of Allah were followed—but also those dictums were enmeshed with some old Jewish practices and beliefs.

In this life Ruburt chose poverty as a background, a mother who was not physically fit, a broken family. You chose parents who in their way were culturally deprived, ignorant of fine music or literature, and temperamentally poles apart. Then you chose a prime ability, not overly valued by society. When the two of you took up together for the reasons given, you decided upon a further handicap, though you had not specifically chosen one.