“Seth material” search engine (Jane Roberts)

(Long pause at 9:22.) Now nothing is all that simple, so there would be changes in his attitudes: He would tell himself, for example, that television or whatever would fritter away his time, or at other occasions other fears would rise so that the Sinful Self would think “Suppose such activity succeeded only too well, leading whole groups of people away from established systems of belief?” (Long pause.) There seemed to be little resolution. The only resolution of course is the realization that no such responsibilities actually exist. If he must think in terms of responsibility, then the only responsibility he has is to express the spirit of life as it is most naturally felt in his experience, through the development of his abilities in their natural flow (underlined).

(Very long pause.) People often react to their beliefs about the kinds of persons they should be, and to imagined events. In such a way that the imagined ones are as real in their effect upon their lives as physical events are. In some cases the imagined events never do show. A person may see himself or herself, say, as a daring explorer, an inventor, an opera star or whatever, and react against such images. They may be perfectly normal people—even gifted in other fields rather than in the specific field of their dreams. However accomplished they might be, however, some consider themselves failures because they have not lived up to those ghost images. Now there are reasons for such behavior. In Ruburt’s case, however, he felt that he should (underlined) act on all the other ways I specified, though he did not want to. Again, on occasion he promised himself that if he walked normally he would be only too glad to perform in such ways. This simply added to the threatening picture. He was also afraid that spontaneously he might want to do such things after all, as if his spontaneous self would work against his better interests.

It shows a change of belief —being willing to bring the body physical pleasure instead of the Sinful Self’s idea of, say, penance or atonement. Pleasure is good for the body and the soul. Religions have been denying the right of the body to pleasure for centuries, so changes in those attitudes are significant. I’ll bring the session to a close. It is enough to digest at one time, unless you have a question you particularly want answered this evening.