“Seth material” search engine (Jane Roberts)

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.

(10:16.) You had excelled, as he had, in all areas of that experience—as warriors, religious leaders, chieftains. In this life, therefore, you always felt sorry for those you felt could not achieve, and often held back your own abilities or criticisms for that reason.

You also questioned. You set up a system of balances so that you would think before using your power. This was overdone, however. On the other hand it was reassuring now because in that other life you were afraid of your own impetuosity, together, and had to know you could control it while using your abilities. You have each controlled it. There is no need then to further show yourselves that you can indeed be understanding and compassionate leaders. In that joint venture it made little difference which of you accepted the role that would in one way or another prevent the both of you from misusing power, for the one role would be passive while the other was active.

Ruburt’s condition has also served as a framework in which he is the opposite of the conquering hero. It is an attempt to play down his presence, to be the absent leader—and in this, again, you heartily concurred. You also played down your own leadership role, while of course maintaining it, and the two of you operate as a team now as you did then.

Very briefly: as a Roman, you pretended to be a follower while you were a man of rank in the military. You had no belief in the conventional gods, yet you were supposed to be conquering lands in their name. You traveled even to Africa. You had a disdain for leaders as liars, and of the masses as followers, and so you were always in one kind of dispute or another, with your fellows, and even with the authorities. You were of a querulous nature, yet highly curious, and again physically involved.