“Seth material” search engine (Jane Roberts)

(I said that I was quite aware that Seth had recently said that all actions are eventually redeemed—but what about in the meantime? How does one live until that happens? As I discussed the question Jane said she began to feel Seth around. I certainly hadn’t expected him to go into the question tonight; in fact, I’d come very close to not mentioning it at all at this time.)

The Sinful Self was given some hope, then.

There were all kinds of aids available: indulgences, litanies, rosaries and so forth. When Ruburt left that system intellectually some of the old bonding power remained, the emotional glue, but he no longer believed in the indulgences, the sacraments and so forth, so the Sinful Self was left fairly isolated, still believing to some extent that to “be good” it must be bad, but without the releases of guilt once provided by churchly help and belief.

(Long pause at 8:46.) Give us a moment.... Science provided no such releases, of course, for it looked upon all such values to begin with as meaningless, including the entire concept of the soul. For some time there was no direct challenge, however, made to the Sinful Self once Ruburt left the church. His creative abilities were growing and developing, his concepts enlarging, but he was for some time so convinced of science’s viewpoint that the ideas of the Sinful Self were looked upon as unworthy and superstitious. He was allied with rationalism instead. Many issues therefore remained unresolved, lying there unchallenged. When his creative abilities found contemporary scientific thought also too narrow, however, and his natural intuitions had led him toward a new framework—one that, again, introduced values having to do with the nature of consciousness, or soul—then the new ideas began to conflict directly with the old buried ones, particularly those that had to do with the conflicts between creative expression, the church, and “forbidden knowledge.” To go ahead creatively, forming new versions of a spiritual reality, to state that man and his impulses were good, brought him finally into direct conflict with the old beliefs of the Sinful Self, whose value system was based upon the idea that the self was indeed sinful, not to be trusted.

Beside this, people were reading our books, so to the Sinful Self Ruburt was leading those people astray (deliberately). Here you have a rather intense situation. (A one-minute pause.) Give us a moment.... The natural self operates within a state of grace, by whatever name, a state that allows for spontaneity, and implies self-trust. Most religious concepts, unfortunately, regardless of the original intentions behind them, end up by dividing man from his own sense of grace—his sense of rightness within the universe, and the individual will do almost anything to gain back that sense, for it is highly vital.

(9:00.) His Sinful Self therefore tried to restate its position in order to right the situation, but its reasoning, again, was that a sense of grace was dependent upon the prior admission of a sinful reality. You have a divided self, of course, in that regard, operationally speaking, and this happens often in your society. The result is repression of one kind or another. The material I gave last night gives valuable information as to how to communicate with that portion of the personality, and bring it up to date, for example.

(Long pause.) That is at least a partial answer to your question. Ruburt began at once, you see, and has done well. Your help has also been of great value, for it showed of course that he was not being abandoned, for one thing. I am going to keep our session brief for this evening, however.

Give us a moment.... (Long pause.).... Once such material is out in the open all of the portions of the personality can work together. Until then you have parts operating at the very least without a sense of unity. (Long pause.) The Sinful Self was, again, formed in childhood. It can be comforted. It can be told now what it yearned to be told then—that it was indeed good, and not bad or evil, that it could indeed use its curiosity without the threat of abandonment, and that it could trust its own creativity and love of play.