“Seth material” search engine (Jane Roberts)

(I do wish I had on record some of my remarks, since in them I clarified some of my own ideas about man’s behavior versus his basic good intent.

(I’d temporarily forgotten the dreams about Bill and Sue, although I have them selected for inclusion in Through My Eyes; they’re on file in that notebook. The one with Bill took place on March 29, 1979. Sue on March 31, 1979. This was a period in which I had a series of potent dreams that Jane has done a lot of work interpreting [including my famous dog dream of March 31, 1979], and which could easily make up several chapters in a book on the subject, if we had the time to produce it. These dreams have been operating as a series, as Jane has pointed out, which increases the value of a person’s dreams in unexpected ways. I think some original ideas are embodied here. Jane has interpreted the Bill and Sue dreams, and Seth has commented on them also. See the 845th session. All of Seth’s dream material has been excellent, by the way.

The evening found you in a clash of ideas, as Bill painted the world through the most pessimistic of eyes. He saw man’s greed for money everywhere predominate. The rest of you to varying extents objected, because he portrayed so clearly the darkest of your own fears and imaginings in exaggerated fashion.

You were astonished when Ruburt told you how much money the Gallaghers were making, for if Bill sold his soul, few it seems could have sold it for less. Bill, however, concentrated upon life’s regrettable elements, upon the impediments, the dishonesties and so forth, until it seemed that even if he followed the world’s way he could not succeed. His idea of manliness was such that he insisted upon a conventional job, clear-cut.

It refers not only to the matters that I have mentioned in past sessions, but also to your ideas of age, and those are also connected to your ideas of manliness, for you want to be a provider.

Next to that kind of achievement, conventional ideas of success or failure are literally ludicrous in basic terms, though I understand the hold that cultural beliefs can still have upon you.

The ideas of age bring this kind of thing into focus. They make Bill Gallagher for example more bitter about his life, for he feels cheated of the rewards when he followed the system. Conventional ideas of age, however, can limit your own ideas of your own creativity. You start thinking “How much time is available?” when the very creative thoughts themselves make more time available.

(10:23. We talked about the dream involved with tonight’s session material. I wondered if it was legitimate to say that the group of dreams was a precognitive insight into the one event—the Friday night gathering. Jane thought so. If true, it would be an original insight, I said. Not that the dreams presaged Friday night’s event per se, but pointed toward some sort of event like it taking place. I told Jane that I didn’t remember reading any ideas like this anywhere.

Ruburt used to feel embarrassed because he made more money in those terms than you, and certainly this played some role initially in the symptoms. (Does it still?) You could not have a job, obviously. You had to take care of him, and it seemed you both saved face; but almost all of your problems come from the unthinking acceptance of conventional ideas that have been allowed to hold sway.

You did what you wanted to do, in line with your own natural inclinations, and only when you judge your circumstances against convention’s surface beliefs do you lack your own approval. You cannot rate the subjective growth of a personality, lines of comprehension, or the value of ideas given to the world. You are a success in lines that can be felt by the world but not measured. The books are more effective than any letter to a congressman, and you put the substance of your life into your notes.

(Seth’s reference to a letter to a congressman came about, I think, because during our conversation on Friday night Bill Gallagher said that no one present had done anything to protest the conditions in our world that we didn’t like—forgetting, of course, that the books themselves are full of protests, and of suggestions for the better. But Bill doesn’t read the books, and to that extent lives in a world closed off from such ideas.)