“Seth material” search engine (Jane Roberts)

(No session was held last Monday night because Jane was so relaxed, just as she was now. Her bodily changes continue, with some good news about improvements in her legs contributed by Frank Longwell after an examination. So does her active dream-experience nightlife, still based upon, often, television programs. Jane had a “scary” dream episode last night, one that was quite unpleasant, she said, and involved her seeing herself in different time frames and three different programs or movies on TV at the same time. By now she can’t say why the episode had been so frightening.

(Jane had reread my list of questions for Seth, based on this last group of sessions, and referred to often. After supper we’d talked about questions 2 and 13, the same ones we’d asked that Seth discuss in another recent private session; he hadn’t done so yet, though. And, of course, his material throughout these sessions can’t but help touch upon various facets pertaining to the questions. So upon that premise, the questions are being discussed all the time.)

In one manner or another, each person mirrors the experience of the world, while also adding to that experience in an original way, impressing reality as no other individual could. It is true to say that reality as you understand it changes as each individual changes. Your thoughts then do change the world, whether you act upon your thoughts or not, they have their effect.

You have been taught for centuries in one way or another that repression, generally speaking, now, was all in all a natural, good, social and moral requirement, that expression was dangerous and must be harnessed and channeled because it was believed so thoroughly that man’s natural capacities led him toward destructive rather than positive behavior.

You are alive to express the individualistic life-force that is the source of your being. You have been taught not to trust that energy, however, and in one way or another your social programs and your governments themselves are based upon the proposition that man must be protected from his own nature —a nature seen as unsavory at best.

One of the main issues is the recognition of the fact that energy is good, that its expression is to be naturally encouraged, and that through such encouragement each individual best fulfills his or her life, and also adds to the development and understanding of the species.

Your country, for all of its obvious errors, still is one in which such issues can best be worked out both philosophically and practically. Now in both of your lives, you have managed to express creative abilities to advantage, to draw upon these not only at isolated periods of your lives, or in partial form, but in such a fashion that they have provided you with continuing frameworks of self-discovery and creativity—so when you are counting accomplishments, remember that (in reference to question 2.

(9:49.) There are qualitative leaps that exist impossible to bridge with the intellect alone that separate, say, well-meaning, adequate-enough attempts toward artistic achievement, and works that are of themselves naturally artistic exhibitions. A lifetime of concentrated effort and intellectual concern alone will not, for example, turn a poor poet into a good one. Techniques may improve, the work may become more polished, but the quality of the poetry itself is what is important.

(Pause.) In one way or another, Ruburt always understood that his natural leanings led him in such directions. It is easy to say that he overdid his defenses. (Pause.) Those defenses also served, however, to some degree (underlined) as a part of a larger learning process, and as a way of containing knowledge that he wanted and felt he required.

This does not mean that he was fated to do any such thing, that it would not be done more easily in other fashions, but you can see some correspondence there by looking at his (underlined) paintings, and the vivid use of contrasting colors that are not subtle. This is of course one way of looking at the entire issue. The same philosophical dilemma, again, lies at a basis for your mass events. Ruburt has been using television programs and such cultural data as a basis for some of his own dreams. In such a way he sees his own personal situation more clearly—but he also sees the world situation as it reflects the same kind of philosophical questions.

(10:22 PM. Jane’s delivery had been surprisingly good and emphatic, considering her relaxed state. “I just had the session because I felt so like not having it,” she said. I told her it was a good one, as usual.