“Seth material” search engine (Jane Roberts)

The idea of the Sinful Self came into play here, for if the material was not true, then in that framework it must necessarily be false—or at the least very misleading. This led to many questions. Is creativity itself involved in a kind of mischievous lying? All of those questions make sense in a framework in which the dictums of one belief system—Christianity—are accepted as true, and everything that does not agree with them is accepted as falsehood.

(9:14.) The yes-or-no, true-or-false categories simply do not work when you are dealing with such issues. (Long pause.) In that regard it is important that he realize this. The entire concept of the Sinful Self can only exist at certain levels of experience. It can only seem to make sense in a very limited context. (Pause.) The creative abilities most often serve as psychological bridges, enabling man to conceive of the existence of realities outside of his own particular point of reference. They can hint at the greater diversity of being, the larger dimension of events. They can present dramatizations. They can serve as thresholds (long pause), but they cannot contain direct experience themselves with events that are intrinsically beyond those reaches.

(Long pause.) You are in the position of living in the ordinary world, while sensing those other fields of actuality in which that world has its existence. The Sinful Self idea can be detrimental in particular when it is faced by experience that must necessarily fall outside of its realm of reference. Both church and science, again, possess a deep suspicion of unofficial or revelatory knowledge, for this must necessarily involve the insertion of new information into a system unable to explain any facts but its own.

(Pause.) In that regard, the questions of Ruburt’s “Sinful Self” must indeed seem to it most alarming, for it possesses no frame of reference in which its own questions can be answered. These very passages are meant to help open the door of understanding, so that the Sinful Self itself can understand why it feels as it does, so that it can also realize that there are other systems in which its questions can at least be considered.

When Ruburt closes his mind to the feelings of the Sinful Self, he locks it up within a prison as if it could receive no new information, but must always operate with the distorted beliefs of its birth. It cannot get feedback.

(Long pause.) Its fears of such feelings, rather than the feelings themselves, cause difficulties, for the repression keeps the Sinful Self forever locked in the past, uneducated, panicky. The release of such feelings allows the Sinful Self some expression, and gives it a sense of communication so that it can indeed be reached by the understanding gained by other portions of the self—a highly important point.

The feelings involve the fear of being abandoned and alone, outcast. The Sinful Self believes it is unloved and unlovable by nature. You talk to it as you would comfort a child. You tell it that it is loved, and will not be abandoned. That it is good and that those who told it anything else were in grave error. No portion of the self is beyond reach in that (underlined) regard, or unteachable. When Ruburt feels that kind of panic it is indeed the small child’s fear of abandonment for being bad (emphatically), and feelings of powerlessness because of the child’s relative lack of power in reference to the adult world.

Those feelings, again, can be accepted as belated expressions. In that way, Ruburt’s own current experience can reach back to comfort the child in the present. Such a process is relatively simple rather than complex, and can be most beneficial. The Sinful Self can be told it is a good self, it is loved, it is safe to express itself, it is free to follow its own motion and curiosity.