“Seth material” search engine (Jane Roberts)

In dreams you often personify portions of the self. And meet them as if for the first time. Your Mrs. Patterson represents your own love for your fellow men and fellow women (with gentle emphasis), and expresses a deep compassion for the situation of your species at this time.

Those characteristics are set in the form of an elderly woman whose pace bespeaks wisdom. She has no arms. However, her concern, her love and understanding, are seen only in the expression of her eyes and face. She cannot embrace the world, and so she is armless. Her concern and understanding also have a mental quality, as your own deepest feelings in those regards are expressed through art or writing indirectly, rather than through direct contact with others.

(A note: I must write that not only was I surprised that Seth opened the session with an analysis of the dream, but that I was even more surprised with the generous connotations he ascribed to it: I may love my fellow man, but often times feel that that feeling is compromised by events in our world, even though I fully acknowledge my own part in helping create that world in the most intimate detail. Seth’s interpretation of my feelings may be too generous. He may also be taking the larger view, as Jane often says he does. On that basis his material may very well express the content of that dream; from that wider viewpoint, I would feel the compassion he describes more openly. Perhaps it’s all another reflection of that curious dichotomy I’ve often felt: One may rail against the world in general, and the behavior of its individuals in particular. Yet as one gets to know each of the individuals in his or her world in particular, it becomes more and more difficult to blame them for the state of the world, or much else for that matter: One becomes too enmeshed with their individuality and humanness. An understanding on a more personal level of the forces in their lives that push and pull them in often conflicting directions makes it very difficult to actively blame people for very much on an individual basis....)

Such systems distort the very nature of idealism by placing the ideal in such an exalted position that it can never be attained, for by giving up the self you have you are to attain instead a wholly pure, wholly loving, idealized, spiritual self. This self will love each other fellow being without reservations, distinctions, or judgment. This self is to miraculously appear as the old self is annihilated. The “annihilation” is accomplished by turning the will over to the authority. To act contrary to your own wishes or inclinations is considered a virtue. You are told not to make decisions, and to give yourself completely to the system of the cult.

The fundamentalist Christian groups, for all of their fanaticism, at least offer some kind of temporary relief for their believers; they are “saved” through prayer and good works. Many other sects, however, offer no such comfort, as for example the Guyana group. The concentration upon self-betrayal and worldly corruption offers no escape. Expression becomes meaningless under such conditions, not trusting the structure of the self, then the self’s expression is denied. It is feared. Yet the new self never comes—not the promised, overly idealized self that feels a godly love without distinctions. And all good works appear meaningless in the terribly exaggerated picture painted of social and world events.

Such groups frown upon the questioning mind. They stress love of mankind, while at the same time cutting down on strong personal affiliations of a loving nature, so that love itself cannot seek its expression in concrete terms. Yet human love specifies, makes distinctions. It focuses with uncanny brilliance upon one individual. Such groups try to defuse that new [true?] focusing. They preach of love while allowing any given individual to love no particular person, and by forcing each individual to cut any bonds of love previously established.

Such people can love no one. All must be pretense. You are given your powers of decision for a reason. You are given the self that you know for a reason. Through fulfilling that self, through following your natural inclinations and desires, you will discover a spiritual and psychic fulfillment. You will expand yourself.

The husband does not want it to seem that he is giving up too soon, however, which he seems to think would involve a loss of face. She is aware of her children, yet likes to appear younger than they are now for her own loving amusement.